It's a common misconception that "ranger" comes from "ranged weapons" or some such thing, but it's actually from "ranging over the land". The defining characteristic of rangers is not archery, it is *movement*. So ultimately, bows and related things, even beasts and related things, are all just optional icing on the cake that is "a dude who roams through the wilds and kicks butt out there".
Yeah the big problem with that idea is that half the damaging spells on their spell list only work with bows and arrows while the other half have no such restrictions requiring melee weapons. Building a Ranger without the ability to use ranged weapons effectively is like building a paladin without effective melee attacks. Technically possible, but doing so requires ignoring your abilities to such a degree you are inherently hampering yourself for no good reason and could probably achieve your goal better by just picking a different class.
I don't think anyone thought that ranger means "range" but as trackers they are natural hunters so a bow is in the kit... the problem is that fighters are better with bows than they are... Bows aren't the icing they are how they put out DPS, and they do better with bows than anything else, still being not great at it. Their defining characteristic is not movement, it is survival in the "range" they inhabit. Tracking, knowledge of the local flora/fauna (for hunting or herbalism), skinning, relationship with the wildlife (such as communicating) there isn't as much movement involved save that they know how to navigate safely and quickly and should communicate best routes to the party.
@@AlphaOmega1237 Ranger's being in close combat works mostly fine, besides the problems that arise from the class itself. They have 6 spells over 5 levels that are restricted to ranged weapons, but it's not that big a deal to choose not to use them. It's less a Paladin choosing not to use melee attacks and is more a Paladin forgoing using healing spells. It's a built in part of the classes spell list but choosing not to use it doesn't gimp you that hard. There are much worse things for Ranger's than not using their bow lmao.
In which case, they can use a few more mobility powers, maybe a extra five feet of movement every four levels rounded up might actually fit quite well, rangers are faster than you.
I had a full-Vampire Swarmkeeper ranger, who lived in seclusion due to others being usually terrified of him. But in nature he learned to control Mosquitos, who would collect blood for him to keep him alive.
As someone who strongly dislikes mosquitoes and finds vampires can have “final-boss-itis” with being so strong without a form of minions besides bats, the mosquito-master idea is really clever and I respect it enough to want to use it somewhere in a campaign now ✨
@@glaciallemon1360 They aren't actual mosquitos, they're spiritual beings that you can choose the form of. So one assumes that the swam master gets to choose what the swarm goes after.
I was in a mafia campaign once and the DM let our ranger homebrew urban as his favored terrain. This way he was actually useful in a low nature campaign
They opened up that option in the 2nd ed. Rangers Handbook, connected originally to a kit called The Stalker. A flavorful option for more city-focused games, that can still express the archetype of the Ranger in a different way
Rangers are like the professional adventurer they’re based on Aragorn and a lot of their role in the party is being the jack of all trades you don’t excel anywhere but you can help with literally everything
The problem is that the Bard is already D&D's jack of all trades. The Ranger is all over the place as far as flavor (and often ability) goes. My impression in that most groups end up houseruling to make the Ranger feel as cool as it ought to be.
@@fusionart4377 Exactly why the books came out in 1954 and the movie came out in 2001, while 5e came out in 2014... Something doesn't add up. Even if we were to take OG dnd as supposed inspiration for Aragorn... a) ranger wasn't even a thing back then b) '1e' came out in 1974, after the books came out.
Back in the day, I ran a campaign with ONLY ranger PCs. They had to find and re-establish an ancient world-wide teleporter network. Each player focused different ranger skill sets. Great fun was had by all.
a former dm i ran with had a similar theme, everyone started as a level 1 ranger and you had to get 'hired' and train into the other classes. So, if you wanted to be a wizard, you'd find a wizard that's looking for an apprentice and you learn to be a wizard and poof, your now a XRanger/1Wizard
Some classes work best in groups, and some only work if they're the only one (or maybe two) in the group. You might think an all-rogue group would be a problem in combat because you have no tanks and no AoE...until your party starts sneak-attacking in pairs--one dodging, the other attacking, then switch--and killing _everything you throw at them_ in a couple of rounds, _if that._ Then, when you start shoving big groups and swarms at them, they just run and hide and either ambush the swarms until they've whittled them down or avoid them entirely. And traps are, of course, useless. And out of combat is even worse when everyone in the party is morally flexible and great at stealth, theft, deception, etc. And it only takes one of them taking a level of ranger to make wilderness-oriented stuff a breeze, too. Don't let your players all be rogues, is what I'm saying, unless they like easy mode or you really like a challenge. All bards is also pretty rough.
I feel like the ranger is made for solo D&D adventures as it is a mixture of multiple classes: Rogue = sneak and avoid damage, druid = cast spells and heal, and fighter = attack/defense in combat. This makes them great at surviving alone, but that's rarely the goal in a D&D game, as you're part of a party.
Rangerr is just a melee dps dealer that had druidic spell as a half caster. Just like paladin was the same with cleric. 5th esition forgot that and just screwed them over. Lol
If you're tracking something or someone, I can understand a Ranger being useful; if you're just wandering around getting into adventures then they aren't really that useful.
I think a TON of why ranger doesn't feel good is because of this misconception of what ranger originally was supposed to be. A lot of people think Legolas is supposed to be the archetype of a ranger, but he's not. Legolas is the archetype of the elf. It was Aragorn that was the ranger. He was the one who was able to figure out how to navigate around middle earth. It's supposed to be like the fighter, but with certain focus on survival and utility over brute force. They were even the original class that had access to dual weilding as a feature. I think the better examples of rangers in recent fiction are the scouts in attack on titan. They quite literally surveyed the land and specialized in fighting a particular enemy, the titans.
Legolas was def a high level fighter with archery fighting style. I was going full melee with a Battle Master, then decided to pick up a long bow and took sharpshooter, and now I can pin seven targets in a row with pinpoint accuracy from 600 feet away. Then I got my fighting changed to archery fighting style, took two levels in rogue as well and Wait. I made a fucking stealth archer AGAIN
Rangers shine in themed campaigns, if the dm has a certain sort of climate or region in mind and communicates with the ranger what it is then they get to shine with their terrain abilities. rime of the frostmaiden for example is very well suited for rangers. Lots of beasts to talk to, not getting lost is super important in the survival aspects of the game and in general rangers are easy to theme into that adventure. I find them very adaptable.
Funnily Rime of the Frostmaiden is exactly what I thought of to. Im itching to run it as my next campaign and I can only imagine how awesome a ranger would be in that setting.
Tomb of Annihilation has a similar vibe too. Jungle/Forest everywhere? Well, you pretty much get to use natural explorer everywhere! It changes in ruin settings depending on DM interpretation but the limited scope of environments helps.
I love themed campaigns for this very same reason. It's so fun to build a character having a theme and playing it feels much more pleasing because you don't run very often in the "my class features don't work here" situation
I think an Archeologist subclass would be sick. Being able to appraise ancient items and being able to decode old texts and symbols, being the trap specialist. It may also work with rogue but i think a ranger subclass with base rogue features like evasion and stuff would be cool.
Antiquarian and I'd have it be rogue with a little MU or Cleric. Mainly they would get divination spells and maybe some protection. I wouldn't give them evasion but I'd let them have stuff like escaping bonds.
@@Dragonette666and a lot of bluff to make "this item has some ritual significance" go through instead of admitting that he has no idea what is the purpose of that item?
that sounds interesting to me it would fit both quite well. the rogue would be more of the indiana jones type and the ranger more like an actual archeologist that is more about the ecavation. would make for great duos with the two. the ranger finds the place and the rogue gets more useful when they actually have found it.
Doesn't that exist in Pathfinder? It honestly makes sense as a party addition since it wold fit in with your typical dungeon diving adventure. Most dungeons aren't new constructions in D&D or any fantasy based tabletop game. There's typically a history that goes along with them. Having someone along that knows history, lore, and various other aspects behind the creation of dungeons makes perfect sense. It's interesting that when there's a modern setting or sci-fi setting involving delving in to an ancient ruin, there's always this type of character that is part of the group but rarely is there one in fantasy settings. Stargate had Daniel Jackson, for example.
Rangers probably make perfect NPCs that assist the party from location to location. They could be like Officer Jennys and all be related but specialize in the region you find them in.
That would actually be a really cool way to run a Ranger as a player character as well. Instead of playing an individual Ranger, you play whatever member of the Ranger order happens to be in the region the adventurers are traveling to. The DM could also give the player a little extra information about the area between sessions, so when the party visits unfamiliar territory they have a local to give them the lay of the land.
As was mentioned in the video, they also make *really* good travelling companions in games that take place primarily in a single biome. Think a Sherpa type character familiar with the tundra of Icewind Dale in Rime of the Frostmaiden, or an escaped slave in the taken in and trained by Myconids in the Underdark during Out of the Abyss. It's just one of things where, instead of making the character before the campaign and hoping you get to use your situational abilities, you need to _talk with your DM_ and see if there's a central environment to the campaign that the party is going to be sticking around, so that they'll be able to fully utilize all of their flavorful, nature-y abilities. Stuff like this is why it's just... _so_ important to talk with your DM during a Session 0. It can turn a class that's not really all that good in most situations to an absolute MVP and natural leader/guide for the campaign. (bonus points if you work out an arc with the DM to have your ranger captured or incapacitated at some point in the campaign, so the party has to try and manage without all of your insane survival skills in an extremely hostile wilderness they're completely unfamiliar with for a couple sessions)
That sounds like a fun concept, a ranger organization that assist the player in multiple places. All you need to do is call and the nearest ranger will be sent to help assist you in that area.
@@almitrahopkins1873 Being an old first edition player back in the 80s, I generally did not like second as so much of it was practically quoting first edition, then telling you to buy more books, but that was one of the few things I liked about second edition, they really hit it out of the park with that and a couple other second ed "background supplements" I still use a few of them as the lore and flavor aspects of my games. By the time it became all "esoteric prestige classes" the writers forgot what the core classes where.
After considering the similarities between Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns and Kurosawa's samurai epics, I had also come to the conclusion that the ranger class was the logical fantasy/ D&D equivalent. They are a natural fit for both western and the wandering samurai/ ronin themes.
you're honestly so correct in making the ranger cowboy subclass, and honestly with most rangers i've played i've leaned into the cowboy/bounty hunter flavour because, at least to me, THAT'S the archetype rangers should be based off of, as much as you can't find that in a lot of typical fantasy (though it's super present in westerns, modern settings, and sci fi). my current ranger is a beast master with a velociraptor companion, but she's less of a nature fanatic and more of a bounty hunter using her innate elven connection to nature to justify the more druidic aspects of the class. i defs would love to see a lot more rangers work with this concept (or even just similar bounty hunter concepts), and hopefully even in 5.5 or 6e the ranger comes into its own as much more of a hunter type of class than just a nature detective.
You could argue the whole meta of "Adventurer" as a career path in D&D settings leans into bounty chasing mindset, since that's by-and-large the role they fill in society. Which makes Rangers having a hard time shining in such a context make both more and less sense at the same time.
My new 5/2 gloomstalker/fighter is ex military, ex blackops and currently a hitman/mercenary. (reroll after first ever char died) Using his tracking and stealth skills (and action surge lol) to dispose of any single target in a swift burst. And if that doesn't do the trick, he's skilled in two-weapon fighting and will be picking up battlemaster for reaction maneuvers. also get a homebrewn Shadowback Cave-Gorilla spirit, direwolf statblock with ape moveset to use with Summon Beast. it was his old ranger compagnion when he was in the ranger squadron in the military. and my DM rules that my spells are prepped instead of known. (because a ranger is all about preparing for situations) Planning to play him as a blunt, straight forward, can't lie to save his life kinda character. Bit more resilient, bit less intelligent. :D My old gnome warlock maybe hit 3 eldritch blasts in his entire 7 level lifespan, so i'm hoping to be a little more useful in battle this time. :')
The issue with rangers in 5E, is that 5E has put so much effort into bypassing the "survival and exploration" pillar of the game. You probably choose a ranger (and probably with the Outlander background) because you enjoy the idea of wilderness survival gameplay. Hunting, tracking, all that stuff. Then low and behold the abilities you get mean the DM just says "OK you do it, pooff, it's done, let's move on" and you skip over all the ranger-y activities and it barely features in your campaign as a result. Not every table enjoys travel, exploration and survival gameplay - and that's fine, because it is easy to skip that if you want. But 5E has sooo many abilities and spells to bypass it that it becomes really hard to focus on for the tables that DO like it.
Even if you don't skip that phase of the game, the base rules for the ranger are too limiting with requiring you to be in your favored terrain or chasing your favored enemy to get a benefit.
@@jasonhawkins6888 Personally, I think ranger is too limited. For example, the fundamentals of tracking something are largely the same, regardless of what you are following, but knowing a lot about the behavior of a specific animal helps you know better where to look for tracks when trailing an animal. (Like, foxes a notorious for being clever when attempting to avoid a pursuing predator.) IMO, a Ranger should have a constant bonus to all tracking attempts and an additional benefit with a favored for. Currently, they are no better than anyone else with Survival proficiency at tracking anything not a preferred enemy. Additionally, these restrictions to when a Ranger can use their core defining abilities are not restrictions you see in other classes, despite there being no balance reason to include such restrictions.
@@saldiven2009 you make a good point. And I think I like your ideas BETTER than Tasha's. It make sense and doesn't have the anime feel that the WOTC fixes have.
@@saldiven2009 Agreed. It should be free proficiencies for being a Ranger or maybe a wisdom skill focused Jack of All Trades, then Expertise for the rolls that line up with your specialties.
I've always seen the ranger archetype as a career adventurer. Someone who goes around doing odd jobs that no one else is willing to; be it for pay, glory, or just because it's the right thing to do. That's why they're so versatile. They're trained to get the job done. It's a weird archetype to fit into because it includes everyone from bounty hunters to caravan guides to vigilantes to monster hunters. Rangers are strange because their archetype IS what a dnd adventuring party does. The fellowship enlisted Aragorn because he does what they're doing for a living. That all said, I've always loved the idea of a cowpoke ranger and I adore your subclass. I'll be sure to try it out!
That's a cool idea, just a generic adventurer class that is kinda okay at everything. The thing holding rangers back for me is that they are specifically druid-adjacent. Having two naturey classes makes less sense to me than having to religiony classes. Clerics are more about healing and defense (exceptions exist) both on the character sheet and in the fiction, as well as generally seeming to be more focused on worship, while paladins are more about going out and smiting evil. Having a druid who protects nature with magic and turning into animals and a ranger who protects nature with magic and a bow and arrow is just dumb to me. Rangers are bound, again, in fantasy, and on the character sheet to their forest just like a druid, or just how a cleric is bound to their temple, but notably, how paladins AREN'T I feel like if a paladin said "so there is this quest..." They would be getting handfuls of holy water put in their hands as they got pushed out the door before they finished their sentence. Ranger needs to be redefined to be like that. Specifically different functionally and in motive from druids. But they aren't. Half their features want them to be tied up in their backstory defending their tundra from oozes and elementals. I have no idea how to do that. Honestly the class should be scrapped and the spare parts go to fighter and rogue and druid subclasses. Hunter roguish archetype with hunters mark, beast master fighter archetype, and a hard to name explorer/survivalist druid circle with martial weapon proficiency and maybe extra attack at level 6 like valor college bards. It sounds weird because rangers are so firmly established but it makes sense game design wise.
In the real world, kings used to literally hire rangers to make sure their lands were safe and free from poachers etc. So yes, career adventurer is an apt description.
Yeah, rangers are just built to be a typical adventuring party all in one, so it has all the things, but isnt so tailored to each like other characters. Theyre very built for all around utility and ability, but because most parties have someone who just does things better, ranger feels weak as hell. I think a good homebrew option for rangers is that, on a long rest, they can switch their favored foe and environement to another, whether it be ahead or the one theyre currently in. That way, it is still locked in, but they already have the knowledge of the land and just need some time to acclimate and/or refresh their mind and body for whats ahead. That way the rangers MAIN ABILITIES that are incredibly situational and may barely come up throughout an entire campaign can actually be useful. Maybe at a certain level (or campaign), the ranger unlocks more foes and environements to favor, like the feywild, shadowfell, etc etc, any of the not-natural places. Id also introduce books or "veteran" npc's that can inform the ranger on different foes and environments for a roll of some kind indicating how many days this knowledge is held and can be used like favored foe and such. I find itd make it the most fun class for a beginner to play then. They get a little bit of ability in everything and can learn to balance their spells, inventory, actions, etc etc. Then, they can roleplay and interact with the world to learn about it, both in game and out of game. Then showing a new player a monster sheet wouldnt be immersion breaking, itd be their character studying. Explaining a region wouldnt be the dm talking to the player, but a character or book explaining it to the character. I think then ranger would be super fun to play
@@korvincarry3268 except they have low-ish AC, middling HP, few defensive abilities, and near zero crowd control/AOE. They are a mix between rogues without sneak attack and druids with hardly any known spells or spell slots, and paladins with lower AC who can't smite or use aura of protection. And that's pretty much it.
@@AveragePearEnjoyer without multiclassing or the swarmkeeper subclass(the best ranger subclass by far) they fall of but if you play a campaign or one shot between Level 1 to 6 they do their job pretty good.
I honestly enjoy the cowboy idea, but while I was watching this I realized you could easily adjust the tracking ability to be able to track any humanoids, essentially turning them into something like a bounty hunter or detective. I'd love to explore its versatility!
I played a wood elf Ranger for a while who was exactly that; professional bounty hunter, part time gambler, full time alcoholic (which is fine, since he used that to replace an addiction to much harder drugs). He used the old Revised Ranger rules, so he actually did extra damage to his favored enemy of Humanoids. And, considering we were based in a city, there were plenty of humanoids around to fight. Sadly, as the campaign was coming to an end, he died of a papercut. Well, the whole group did.
@@jasonreed7522 First, have you seen "Read or Die?" Second, it was a whole lot of papercuts...from a Living Spellbook. After we made our way up the library tower fighting flying automatons spamming mini fireballs.
@@stormy_does_stuff It was rough, but our DM was moving away, so it was a good way to end that campaign. We actually ended up starting another campaign once he got settled in, which was probably our longest running single campaign.
The Cowboy Code of Conduct is really cool. Kinda halfway between Paladin and ranger. 1. Live each day with honesty and courage. 2. Take pride in your work. Always do your best. 3. Stay curious. Study hard and learn all you can. 4. Do what has to be done and finish what you start. 5. Be tough, but fair. 6. When you make a promise, keep it. 7. Be clean in thought, word, deed, and dress. 8. Practice tolerance and understanding of others. 9. Be willing to stand up for what’s right. 10. Be an excellent steward of the land and its animals.
There is a book series that I've read called "The Ranger's Apprentice" and that is what I think of when you talk of ranger. Basically they are a multiclass of fighter and rogue with a sprinkle of survival skills. I believe that is what they should have done with ranger, a survivalist with a heavy emphasis in playing a stealth fighter. In that series the main character is taught to dual wield, specialize in the bow, how to camoflage, how to survive, and most of all how to kill your enemies silently. Basically Fighter/rogue.
I'm having a lot of luck playing a ranger in a Drow campaign. "The Underdark" being a RAW favored terrain is real good when the entire campaign is expected to be in the Underdark, and both Drow and Elves are the same favored enemy too!
i think one of the core parts of enjoying playign a ranger is making sure with your DM the setting you'll be spending most of your time in so you can choose a favoured terrain that is actually useful rather than something you spend the whole campaign wishing "well I wish I knew we'd be spending so much time in this type of area before I made my character"
I do love the idea of the Cowboy Subclass. As that's literally how I play my Horizon Walker Ranger, as a far traveling magical cowboy who can teleport all over the place with a rifle. Also YOU DIDN'T MENTION HORIZON WALKER AT ALL?! One of the most unique Ranger subclass options!
This made me come up with a list of cool Cowboy Conclave names: _The Spurs_ _Hell's Horsemen_ _The Gumption_ _Frontier Justice_ _The Dusters_ _The Deputy's Chosen_ _The Songbirds_ (For a party of ranger/bard multiclasses) _The Knuckledusters_ (Ranged/melee brawlers) _The Lead Company_ _Los Diablos_ _Bad Tidings_ Feel free to add more, and let me know what you think!
I would say the rangers one thing is “survivalist”. So the way to tackle that is with lots of varied skills. Focusing on the skills is hard because you fall behind in combat impact. But if you have a DM that gives moments in the adventure for the ranger skills to shine it’s great.
I've yet to play a campaign where survival mechanics even existed, because any time it was attempted, accounting for things like hunger or navigation or even encumbrance bogged the gameplay down too much. Subsequent failures to find food leads to exhaustion and TPKs from random goblin troops just due to bad luck. Navigation failures just prolong travel times, which forces the DM to come up with new random encounters they weren't prepared to have. In the best case, survival mechanics prohibit narrative progress. In the worst, they create catastrophes just from dumb luck, which lead to dissatisfying outcomes for the players. So it's best to ignore them. But when you ignore them, there's not a way for a ranger to shine. On the other hand, not ignoring them, the ranger makes those mechanics inconsequential, unless they're not in their favored environment, so the survival mechanics may as well have not existed or the player may as well have not played a ranger. The survival mechanics are badly designed, which makes designing a class around them consequently bad.
I feel like making Rangers a survivalist that could pick from abilities list like the ones that battle masters have or the eldritch invocations list would be a way to make it work. That way you can have both combat AND survival stuff that’s relevant to combat, exploration, or RP as the player wants, as opposed to having a bunch of exploration stuff that isn’t relevant in certain campaigns
I kinda like the idea of a ranger either being a generalist survivalist or a niche survivalist. But I also believe in common sense growth. Like whichever one you'd pick, the more knowledge and experience you get, the more you can branch into the other one.
I like the idea of a survivalist. You could lean into it really hard by making a character archetype that will never feel hopeless, no matter what. Survivalist could be the same thing for... well, surviving, as the Investigator class is for investigation in pathfinder 2e. For those uninitiated, Investigator is a mundane martial class with information gathering and anticipation abilities that bend reality to achieve the level of foresight and experience we normal people wouldn't be able to rp. Abilities like pulling out any consumable that you "prepped" beforehand, planning out stratagems for combat or just plain out fabricating real info. The same way Survivalist could produce effects that result in increased tenacity in harsh environments, without having to actually explain the science behind it. (or better, let the players come up with fun explanations on how you manage to undo banishment to another dimension without magic)
I think using survivalist as a guide. We could fix the class issue over all. A survivalist is a master of the land they are staying in . So if we do some editing to Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy. Favored Enemy -it let you learn about a target to hunt it better so the more you fight a type of creature. The better you get at doing it and you learn about it. Same for Natural Explorer . the longer you stay in a type of land the better you get at staying their. I'll add guns (includes blowgun), polearm and throwing to fighting styles as their are many ways to hunt (giant yo yo).
I came up with a few buffs to Ranger that helped make them avoid being too overspecialized, such as increasing the amount of favored terrains and foes they can have, as well as some specific buffs to subclasses.
Gloomstalker is incredibly underrated. It gives you the ability to become basically invisible in the darkness, even to creatures that have darkvision. It’s amazing when you are attacking at night, or if you’re inside someplace, just blow out the candles. Although it’s somewhat situational, it pairs well if you’re into multiclassing some sort of stealth character.
You know what the funny thing is? Xanathar quips about it being useless for rangers to hide in the dark because most monsters have darkvision... Despite the fact that Xanathar wouldn't actually be able to see said ranger if they were actually hiding from him.
Final Fantasy 7, you spend most of the game one step behind a celestial you're trying to track down. One level in ranger with celestials as your favored enemy would make finding Sephiroth and Jenova a lot easier. I hate that almost everything ranger gets, multiple other classes get better versions of at the same level or lower.
artificer isn't wizard-halfcaster, their spell lists are way too different and thematics don't match up at all, not to mention Artificers aren't exactly martials outside of 2 subclasses (rest focuses on using cantrips instead of swinging a sword/shooting). What further reinforces the point is how artificers multiclass with other casters. Unlike Ranger or Paladin, they don't add half their level rounded down, instead adding half-level rounded up, which leads to some fun things like 1 lvl artificer 19 lvls wizard. Now I'd love to have an actual wizard half-caster, a Magus, smack with a sword and pack a spell into that smack etc. Give then wizard-like spell prep, a spellbook and I can think of like 3 subclasses of the top of my head, one focused on your 2hander big smack no idea about the name. 2'nd let's call Spell Breaker, and make it 'sword and board' with focus on defence against magic (perhaps magic resistance as subclass feature later on) and... arcane archer (not the sad excuse fighters got, though if you wanna keep that one, let's call it Eldritch Archer).
@@danielhuelsman76 Pathfinder 1e had something close to this, a "skald" who had some bard spells, and ability to inspire rage giving allies weaker version of barbarian's rage (it's either weaker or shorter I can't remember)
One thing I'd like to quickly point out about the Primal Companion Feature (the replacement feature for the Beast Master subclass) is that, unlike the Ranger's Companion Feature which requires you to use your full action for it to attack, you can command the primal companion to take an action using your Bonus Action, meaning you and your companion can both attack on the same turn right off the bat. Subsequently, you can still make two attacks and have your companion attack on the same turn once you get your Extra Attack at level 5, and further more once you hit level 11 your companion can attack twice when it takes the attack action (the Primal Companion feature only replaces the level 3 feature for the Beast Master keeping the other features unaffected for the most part), meaning you can get 4 attacks in every turn.
I think he knows that, it's just those are optional features a he assumes not every table will use them. I knew one dm years back that never allowed the Xanathar book for the longest time.
Drakewarden also gets this, it's just really nice to be able to do more with your companions. It's really sad they've still yet to even errata this into base Companion to streamline it with all the other "summoner" style subclasses that command with bonus actions.
I'd also like to remind everyone, since this is a mistake I see sometimes, that the Primal Companion is still a creature with a regular action economy, but it specifically acts DURING your turn, rather than in its own initiative or after yours (like some companions/familiars do). Your companion has only 1 action per round. The option to command it by giving up one of your attacks does not let you also command it with a bonus action. It's simply an option you have for when your bonus action is used up by something else, such as when casting a spell, to get your companion to use its action.
To touch on Ranger's spellcasting, recent additions to their spell list include Revivify and Greater Restoration, which, alongside Healing Spirit, gives them a surprising amount of healing they can pump out. Combined with the Pearl of Power to add some additional spell slots and the Moon Sickle (which like Druids, Rangers can also attune to!) Rangers can absolutely work as a party healer and dedicated support class.
when you talked about the swarm, I basically thought of a swarm of nightmarish crows based on illusion and necromancy spells not so far away from your own twist 🥰
Hmm- that opens an interesting question: does a swarmkeeper's swarm even have to be real or can it be illusonary or imagined? Gives me the idea of a severly alcoholic dwarf ranger who is often close to delirium tremens and sees those epinymous white mice or crawling bugs... and can somehow direct his hallucinations to affect others.
@@Abxiximab Side note: now you've got me thinking about a crack addict with latent, uncontrolled illusion/conjuration powers, that causes him to manifest the bugs he feels crawling under his skin.
@@Abxiximab I was largely inspired by Carmina from Dead by Daylight... :( I like your idea of a hunter of questionable sanity that hunts down his target wherever they are and could drives them crazy In my mind this type of ranger would be more spell focus...like a witch/druid but he could enhanced his combat ability with incomplete beast forms, twisting his body into a deadly weapon just for the hunt the swarm could be illusions/imaginary or animals raised from the dead there is a lot of possibility ^^
I love the vampire idea you presented. I’m thinking about maybe changing the subclass to drakewarden and flavouring the draconian companion to be the red bat that his mom sent to him.
Pointy hinted at this but; I really like the concept of rangers, it just isnt very good as a player class in almost all campaigns - it does however fit very well as an npc. Most NPCs stay one place the majority of the time, and thus it makes sense that they specialize in the area and maybe the creatures around it. The new optional features does something to mitigate this flaw in the class, but as they said, it often takes away from the vibe of the class
instead of cows, it's been his/her family's solemn duty to keep the restless souls/ zombies living there (a cursed graveyard) in check. eventually one (or more escaped), and now they are traveling to bring the souls back in/ end the threat to his family. (favored enemy is undead i guess? Or have them go for any undead as their favored foe in combat?)
This is gonna be super helpful, I actually need a cowboy type set of enemies for a cowboy area my party’s approaching. I’m hoping to integrate the Ranger Lich into that as well. Thanks mate!
Love your videos but there are a few things to mention: 1. Favored Foe does damage only on one attack per round and takes up concentration which is also bad. 2. The optional feature for Beastmaster makes them work off your bonus action to attack instead of your action (similar to other subclasses that gain a companion now like Battlesmith for Artificer). This was just some corrections, now for things that aren’t that. 1. Everyone claims that Ranger is a mixture of Fighter and Druid. This makes sense given Paladin similarly being a mixture of Fighter and Cleric. But given what abilities they are granted and that they get more skill proficiencies, I would argue it’s more Rogue and Fighter. The main Druid flavoring comes from some shared spells, a class feature that is shared by one Druid subclass (Circle of The Land), and plenty of flavor word choice that one can easily conflate for Druid including a fighting style that grants them two Druid cantrips. 2. Rangers have always been bases namely on Aragorn and the Dunedain Rangers (not Legolas). Other similar archetypes for Rangers (besides cowboys) would be things like Bounty Hunters (to the point that Star Wars 5e, a conversion of 5e renamed the class to Scout and have different bounty hunters as examples for subclasses), Skirmishers, and other sorts of martially proficient, yet skilled individuals like the IRL Texas Rangers. 3. Rangers aren’t exclusively good in using ranged weapons anymore with the advent of spell equivalents to more prominent ranged options. Thank goodness for things like Ashardalon’s Stride, Searing Smite, Elemental Weapon, and so on. I think Drizzt Do’Urden, of the novels in the Forgotten Realms, is to blame for sticking the archer/beastmaster archetype to Ranger. 4. Ranger with it’s initial features came out to be so bad because WotC tried to build it around the “Exploration Pillar” of the game. Unfortunately, that pillar doesn’t get used. But kinda fortunately, it would have probably been a bad time for people since Ranger was the only class that had a feature that even worked with that pillar (Natural Explorer). You could argue that Expertise from Rogue (especially Scout Rogue) or Bard or the Skill Expert/Prodigy feats could assist, but that wasn’t apart of intended design. WotC did more to fix Ranger with Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but only so much. I hope all of this didn’t come off as nitpicky and negative. I love your videos and just wanted to poke through some commonly parroted points mentioned in the video. And the subclass is pretty good!
Ahhhh the "Exploration pillar" i don't even disagree with it as a pillar! But it's the area where i feel like every character has zero abilities and is totally incompetent at. Party fights an adult dragon? meh. 30 ft. wall? WATCH OUT GUYS!
Also he described the capstone wrong. It's not adding wisdom to all damage rolls against favored enemy, its being able to add wisdom to an attack or damage roll once per turn against a favored enemy.
I like to think of Rangers as special-forces (Dutch from the movie Predator, Rambo, both of the main characters from the movie The Hunted, etc.) They infiltrate behind the lines, living off the land, remain undetected, while carrying out missions. The main modification I would make to the PHB version of the Ranger is grant Natural Explorer (additional terrain type) more frequently. Instead of just 6th & 10th Level grant additional terrain type at level 4 and every two levels thereafter. It makes sense as at low levels they specialize in the areas they came from but as they adventure (and travel the world) they learn to apply their skills in more and more environments.
They work incredibly well in that situation... but the problem is that this is a game where you work as part of a group. that's part of what makes Hide in Plain Sight such an annoying feature. It makes you, specifically, very good at hiding and not moving... which is great if you are planning an ambush... that none of the other party members are around for...
And you'll keep Favorite Enemy as it is? Underwhelming and mostly situational? Favored Foe is not much better since it requires concentration like most of the spells in your spell list. Ranger should be a non-magical martial class focused on hunting, moving around better, surviving nature and such.
@@yarnosh A little, but the ranger seems almost designed for solo play, in a very strange way. And while a rogue can figure some way to utilize the Paladin's clatter, little you can do with the Rangers ambush besides make the enemy think the party -1 is ambushing them. Which is kind of sucky
@@Chaosmancer7 The ambush scenario seems pretty niche. That's certainly not the core M.O. of a Ranger. My Ranger has been hugely useful to he party navigating through wilderness, especially in favored terrain, of which he has two now. And the flying beast companion is indispensable for scouting especially with Beast Sense. And if you role play survival (like need to hunt food for the party) and don't want to cheese it with a druid casting Goodberry every day. I dunno, I have zero problems playing a Ranger with a party. He's just so versatile. Ha's made the finishing shot on more than his share of encounters... It's going to depend a lot on the setting. Like if it's a more old school dungeon crawl, a Ranger won't be of much use.
Great analysis. I do disagree that the Tasha optional abilities are less ranger-y, because a Ranger is the archetypical skilled survivalist that uses all of the tools of the trade as well as improvisational skills to cross wild stretches of land and be able to overcome the obstacles, whether monster or terrain. Canny's ability to give expertise and new skill buff this. The extra spells from Primal Awareness buff this. Extra movement and speed options, temp HP and exhaustion recovery, temporary invisibility (ok out of character concept, this should have given something like a Pass Without Trace flat buff to stealth) all contribute to this archetype. Most of the "ranger bad" rhetoric stems from the oft forgotten 3rd pillar of D&D, exploration. I'm convinced WotC does not like going outside
The Ranger is a legacy class that was designed to assist in hex crawls. This from a time when you actually had to venture into the wilderness to find your dungeon.
I was looking for this comment. Back in ye olde days Ranger had a niche: they found and guided the party to the orc encampment and kept bellies full on the way there. Nowadays, there are so many ways to subvert these two mechanics, the Ranger really has no purpose. And I'm not saying the minimizing of those mechanics in modern D&D is a bad thing, either. Most groups found them tedious pace-killers. Just ask the mayor where the orcs are coming from, buy ten gold of rations, and you're fighting greenskins in under a minute. So what's a class to do when their niche is all but removed from the game? You can demote it to a subclass. Either have it be a flavor of Fighter with an animal companion and bonuses to outdoorsy things, a Druid with more martial skills rather than casting, or even a Rogue that hunts by climbing trees and sneak attacking animals in a prairie.
@@TheKrossRoads I think making a nature or beast flavored subclass for other classes is a great idea. We already have the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster, which are Spell flavored fighters and rogues. We have summoning focused Druids, which takes the Beastmaster's thunder, and Fighters can be better archers as well. The Ranger Class has just been left behind.
The whole bit about larping as Aragorn is true. Part of why it happened in the first place. Same with Gygax basically inserting monks into 1e because he liked kung Fu movies. That said, my personal belief is that rangers can fill a viable niche. That niche being wilderness survival. It's just that the modern playstyle isn't interested in the old school formula of trekking through a wilderness back and forth between town/stronghold and the dungeon.
Oh my god you are right cowboys perfectly fit the idea of a ranger. I think in general the concept of rangers fits better with some later exploration age roles. Frontiersman, trappers/furriers, expedition style explorers and big game hunters. Honestly think these roles can help solve the fix of being tied to a specific location. Why should rangers be tied to one type of place or creature? You should be focused on adapting to different environments & surviving in them. You should have different genres of tools to choose from, things that use arrows or bolts, Blackpowder weapons. Hell why not even have them focused on unconventional weapons Environmental /ensaring weapons I.E. bear/wolf traps, bolas, Nets, Bombs, tripwires, lassos, whips. Most importantly we should change how we look at how they are specialized in dealing with flora, fauna and fungi. Big game hunters specialize in larger enemy classes, keeping track any enemy they have wounded, once they've got you there's no escape. They specialize in making weapons deal more damage if left in an opponent. Imagine a whaler with a harpoon or filling an ogre with barbed crossbow bolts. Trappers/furriers are much more easily identify the roaming habits of creatures & tracks, have much better options for stealth, are great with poisons, get much better use of the corpse of creatures and make more valuable items from them. Explorers are a master of all tracking and can identify most creatures and if not they can likely classify them. They are master gathers and can easily determine the safety & edibility of flora and fauna. They know many languages and are better at attempts to communicate to those who they do not understand the language of & better at interpreting all except thieves cant. Frontiersman are masters at surviving and enduring harsh environments of any kind. They don't need to eat as much or as often, they can prepare food to make it take longer to spoil. They can obtain drinking water from sources most can't. They gain bonuses to perception and are better at hitting targets from far range. They are far better at climbing & surviving falls. Injuries affect them less and and can preform special actions at rest (and sometimes combat) to remove poisons, stop bleeding create splints to restore normal function. Btw I encourage anyone that has them to comment further ideas.
I agree with what you said and I feel like that's what they are trying to do with some of the new optional abilities and me personally I always saw rangers as explorer to me that's how they felt
Well, I would say that rangers are also good tribals and ice age arquetypical people if rage is not a big thing to their character, not necesarily more exploration age things exclusively. But I can definetly see it. After all the monk was originally based on martial arts movies and now is arguably the weeb class, so not every class is for typicall fantasy medieval settings.
Yeah, I think the fronteirsmen idea really exposes the true nature of the ranger. The reason why all the ranger ideas focused on protecting a spot of nature or something feel like druids, not rangers, is because that IS what a druid is, not a ranger. The vibe of the ranger is someone who survives and thrives in the wilds, and knows how to use it to their advantage.
The optional abilities come from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, where the really bad abilities (excluding Foe Slayer for some reason) from the Player's Handbook were overhauled so that ranger became actually good. My interpretation of the ranger design philosophy is that they're supposed to be self-sufficient generalists. What they can do (outside of the exploration/tracking stuff that everyone skips) _can_ be done better by other classes. Fighters are better for sustained damage, spellcasters are better for burst and control, rogues have an easier time becoming stealthy, and anyone with Healing Word is a better support. However, rangers have attacks and duration spells for sustained damage. They have control and area-of-effect spells. They may sneak as good as any rogue. They have Cure Wounds or Goodberry for a sticky situation. I think this design philosophy fits the flavour of a secluded loner in the wilderness rather well. And before anyone brings up bard, they have two subclasses that let them be a martial at all and most of their main-class features are based on song of rest, a clear support ability, and bardic inspiration, which literally requires an ally to be used at all. Like their 2nd level feature suggests, they are jacks of all trades for skills and out-of-combat RP, while rangers are jacks of all trades mechanics-wise. Mechanically, bards are support-oriented spellcasters.
The Bard is the with the cleric the best support class. The Ranger is more someone that can do multiple things that a party lacks. Stealth you have pass without a trace. Control spells that require concentration like spike growth. Healing and goodberrys if the healer run out of healing spells. But mostly most people play the ranger kinda wrong. He isn't supposed to be sneaky or a tank and still people think he is.
@@georgeuferov1497Tasha's was an absolute necessity. Ribbon features are nice, but ribbons are just that. They're decoration. And having half of your features be dependent on where you are is a serious handicap when you're not in that environment. Take the Tomb of Annihilation campaign. Forest would work alright for much of Cult, but inside the tombs, you get nothing. Deft Explorer is so much better, since it gives you Expertise in one of your skills. Favored Enemy is alright for survival/exploration/roleplay. But it's next to useless in combat. Favored Foe is so much more useful overall, because the extra damage simulates your knowledge of fighting such creatures, and it basically gives you a light Hunter's Mark without using actual spell slots.
Let me say that I am finally getting around to commenting on one of your videos! I found you a couple weeks ago, subscribed, and have just been autoplay consuming all of your D&D with a twists! I comment on this one because I have a list of race and classes to make an OC character for each but Ranger has been blank for the longest time! I’d almost given up hope of finding anything that resonates or that I could tolerate until NOW! The cowboy conclave is the subclass answer I needed! Thank you a thousand times over!
With a single dip into Life Cleric, Rangers can be one of the best (if not taking the top spot) out-of-combat healers in the game. Goodberry is absolutely insane, giving you a flat 40 HP to divide among your entire party for a single first-level spell slot. Right before you finish your long rest, pump every spell slot into making berries, and you’ll be set for the day.
Berries last for 24h, so even if your dm doesn't allow longrest casting (I can see why, it does feel like an oversight in the rules) you can do it right before long rest with your leftover slots and have them essentially for the next day.
@@The_Yukki Either way, that’s probably the best healing you can get out of combat. The only reasons you’d need to take a short rest is for the party to get back other resources.
@@tekbox7909 oh I know about the post, it doesn't change the fact it can come off as cheesing. I'd probably allow it at my table, but I can see why someone would not.
It's just ironic though because I think "healer" was not the point of the class. And every aspect of the ranger can be done better by other classes. I still enjoy playing them though.
Seems like the rules for Favored Terrain and Enemy just need to be adjusted so that the Ranger can change their picks throughout the campaign. For example, if the Ranger's party moves into a new terrain, the ranger should be able to study that terrain over several days, and become familiar with it. This would make it their new Favored Terrain. And the same should hold true for an enemy. If the party has been tracking or fighting orcs for a few days, the Ranger should have the option to be studying the enemy, and after some time, it becomes their new Favored Enemy.
Another optional class feature, Familiar Terrain: You can spend several days (and probably gold because 5e loves that for some reason) to study and familiarize yourself with a new terrain or environment. Once you have done this, you gain the favored terrain benefits for that specific location, and any locations similar to it. This way you can get specific with the “one specific place” theme of the ranger, it can continue to be useful, and you can use your knowledge gained their elsewhere. Not like ranger needed more optional class features, but it’s an idea.
I would adjust the favored Terrain to be a regional thing, versus just a particular terrain type. So instead of say woods.. I would say more of a geological region (or tropical, or sub tropic, or tundra) which would include all terrain features in that region (woods, hills, rivers, mountains). An tie in a level tiered unlock for that ability that allows something similar to a Familiar Terrain aspect that requires a ritual like prep time (ie do some hiking around an quickly survey it) you could use in other places outside of your favored terrain in order to gain the same benefits.
Your cowboy idea has made me want to try ranger for the first time. That sounds like a fun spin on it I never thought of before. Thanks for that. Another good video
10:55 Legolas is a fighter though. Aragon is the ranger. I do have to say that I played a ranger in a oneshot in one specific mountain range. It was almost OP. The DM had to nerf him as he could literally know where the quarry went, where to find food, get extra damage track things with advantage. He is a beast on survival campaigns focused on one specific terrain. DM needed his tracking and gave me optional features on top of that. So I guess I ended up playing a bit roided ranger. I have to say though, combat wide, a bit underwhelming. Okay damage, and after the first round (Gloom Stalker) it felt like you did almost nothing. Then again the nova turn one probably skewed that perception.
@@armorclasshero2103 no, but he does take herbs from the wild and turn it into a remedy for frodo to slow down the poison of that cursed sword (like a healing spell), made sure to cover the fellowship's trail (like the pass without trace spell) and other things that if you think for 5 minutes can be replicated with a spell
@@armorclasshero2103 The magic system in Tolkein's work is not very well defined. Basically only the gods, demigods (like Gandalf and Sauron), and elves can do "magic" with some exceptions. Aragorn is know to have "healing hands" which can be considered magical but also could not depending on who you ask. Also keep in mind that rangers didn't always have magic in D&D.
I played a Horizon Walker with all the Tasha's Couldron replacements, and it transformed the "forest dweller with a bow" into a scout into the unknown of the other realms, those 'less situational' options characterize more as a tracker with a lot of ability to adapt to new enviorments It was so cool
I enjoy ranger atm (and actually really really like OneDND Ranger) and personally, my sort of "core of what a ranger is" has always been "The pique survivalist" With a little druid and a little martial... obviously, lots of characters can be survivalists, and druids embody that too, but i think of druids as "protectors of nature" and rangers as "survivalists" they're the ones who get hired to guide you through the sketchy jungle, the one who can survive in the wilderness forever, the hunter, the apex predator. Idk, that's what I've always thought of them.
What I'm gonna do eventually is, when they come out officially, mechanically play a plasmoid swarmkeeper ranger, but play it as an amorphous swarm of rats that are somehow smart and coordinated enough to keep a humanoid shape most of the time, and have the swarmkeeper swarm be The Rats That Make Up The Character
I am a ranger player, it has always been my favorite class, matched only by paladin and sorc. My favorite recent ranger was a thri-kreen named Justin Case (my dm just sort of let us play setting specific races in any campaign). The whole deal with Justin Case was that he was a classic hard-boiled noir detective, whisked away into the feywild. He was best in urban terrain, but his tracking proficiency was genuinely super helpful for the main story. He also had a bit where he would thri-kreen broadcast his detective-film internal monologue all the time, which was a real hit with the party.
I've actually also made a Thri-kreen ranger! Tazvan the Chitspeaker. Even though I mostly made him to prove/test that fun characters could be made in my own setting I feel like he'd be fun to play. In an attempt to keep this short classes (especially full caster classes) in this world are basically the only thing that's made it possible for civilization to exist (that's how many monsters are here) so each of the handful of nations in the known world guard the secrets of training people into their classes like the state secrets they are. Meanwhile Tazvan became a ranger by accident while traveling with a ranger he'd found lost in the desert. His life mission is to gain enough glory in his people's eyes that he can found a new clan of Thri-kreen that he can teach his new knowledge to. He's a violent, naked, bug-man surviving in a wilderness incredibly infested with monsters who's telepathic voice buzzes and sounds insect-like. I'd really like to play him someday.
I had personally homebrewed a similar subclass to the cowboy idea that was fit for something more "pirate" themed. I had named it the Gunslinger. They would have an affinity for flintlock pistols, more specifically, drawing from the Ranger's belt of flintlocks to create opportunities for big burst damage. I hadn't fully worked this out but, to account for the animal taming side of things, I would allow this class access to some aquatic life, more specifically, dolphins or any sea mammals really, to help guide the ship the ranger inhabited. The ranger spells that tie to their ranged weapons would also apply here
Firstly love the cowboy conclave idea, more so now becasue I'm running an old west themed one shot, also really love the swarmkeeper idea~ i might have to steal it.. anyway! brilliant work as always your such a gem keep at it!
I made the mistake of choosing ranger for my first ever character and my first ever campaign and I thought I would be doomed, but luckliy I've found a lot of success with the drakewarden subclass! I've taken a lot of inspiration from Game of Thrones, Eragon, and, of course, HTTYD, and I've been able to create a character with a rich backstory along with impressive and useful abilities and feats! However, I really loved your creation of the Cowboy conclave and I honestly can't eait to try it in the future in other campaigns or if something should befall my character ranger. Thanks for all the helpful tips!
Her: "He's probably thinking about other girls." Him: "If Kirby's copy-abilities were D&D-classes, Archer would be Ranger and Ranger would be Gunslinger."
6:01 correction, you can add it your attack roll OR damage and only ONCE per turn against your favored enemy. Secondly you missed level 14's Vanish which lets you do the hide action as a bonus action and also not allow you to be tracked unless you do so intentionally or by magical means. Basically what the rogue gets at level 2, only worse.
My BF is currently playing a circle of spores/swarm keeper multi class tortle called Sherm, who grows mushrooms on his shells and keeps wasps. And the synergy between both subclasses is so amazing
I think my favorite ranger I’ve played was a Warforged Swarm Keeper Berserker Barbarian multi class he was an animated Scarecrow who was animated because a witch cursed the land he was on and the cursed land killed the farm owner so motives by anger and “for da birds” will he strike down every coven
2:43 Favoured enemy was *really* good in 3.5 and PF 1e. So, Wizards nerfed it because they hate fun. 6:05 Like most 5e capstones, this is completely underwhelming and does nothing but incentivise crossclassing.
The capstone is +WIS to the attack or damage roll, which is better than just damage. ... ... But it can only be applied once per turn to one attack. People think it's trash tier when it's actually exponentially worse than they assume it is. Lol.
@@GlacialScion exactly, my ideal fix for it is to instead a feature you get at 4th level, it’s PER attack made, AND based off the proficiency bonus. I understand putting it at 4th level seems… odd. But I have 3 reasons for it 1). Any earlier (say level 2) and people would just use it as a dip like with fighter and action surge. 2). Any later like say level 6-9 it might never see play in a campaign or session. 3). Putting it at 4 creates incentive and rewards players for going into 5th level for the extra attack.
I started watching a bunch of videos about rangers on RUclips BECAUSE I wanted to build a ranch hand/ cowboy ranger, so when you started talking about ranger cowboys I yelled "YEEES!" so loud my roommate came to see what was going on 😂 so thank you for helping me flesh out the idea I've been playing with!
My favorite dnd character I ever played was a ranger, She was a Tiefling with an unfortunate placement of her horns being where her eyes should be making her blind, raised by a hermit wizard in the forest who's familiar was a crow. When the wizard died she mourned but at some point found herself able to see via the crow, over time crows just seemed to gravitate towards her as she practiced archery using their sight. Just a fun little swarmkeeper concept it had the added bonus of the watchers dark gift cause it was a curse of strahd campaign
So one of my favorite ideas for re making the ranger is to give them something like a wizard's spellbook ranger "lore" a ranger has lore they know such as spells knowledge on enemies or terrains, but they can only prepare so many like other characters would spells, and they only know so many and must add to their lore (ways might include leveling up, researching enemies, studying their corpses, studying a terrain, or learning from another ranger) I like this idea because it sticks to the thematic strengths of the ranger while still working mechanically (at least in theory) there is also some question of what the bonuses for terrains might be and maybe there would be multiple, so a forest might have removing difficult terrain penalties, a mountain a climb speed, or the ocean swim speed for example, and/or something similar to what favored terrain does for specific terrains
The ranger always was a straightforward class to me: Exploration, survival and hunting. The ranger doesn't need to stay in the same place, the ranger is a pilgrim, a traveler. He travels long distances, learning different biomes, different climates, different types of nature. He uses bows because it's the most effective tool for hunting. The ranger is sneaky, patient, you don't see him but he sees you. The ranger is like PREDATOR, but good instead of evil. The ranger is like a Witcher, accepting bounties from people who doesn't know how to deal with monsters. The ranger studies the creatures.
Including a mechanic where the ranger can actively learn about terrain or a type of creature would improve them quite a bit, instead of restricting it on level up as a choice. Kinda like how wizards can learn spells and put them into a spellbook, a ranger should have a bestiary that they fill out as they kill and hunt during a campaign. IDK what benefit it would provide, but I'm sure others could figure something out.
@@RaccKing21 I use a % system. In other game, magic, languages and other types of knowledge develops by %. Let's say you have your homeland (forest) at 100% because you born there and live there since then, you know everything, animals, geography, weather, etc. Then when you grown up and moved to another region not so far from your home, lets say mountains. You worked there as a "watcher" for 6 yers and learned the most you could but there's still much more to discover. Roll a dice with a maximum of idk, let's say 60% (10% for every year you were there). A 42% is the result. You can develop that knowledge every time you make a check related to that region. Let's say you made 12 rolls on a session, then you have 12 tries. You must succed by rolling MORE than 42%, if you do, you upgrade 1%. This last part is my favorite, not only is easy but also balanced and quite realistic. When you start learning, it's easier to discover new things, but the more you know, the more you have to delve because the most dark, rare things are the ones you are missing. A char with 90% won't learn much by hunting deers as another char with 4%
I once played a wizard-ranger. He was basically a scholar wizard that travels around adventuring picking mushrooms as a hobby. You know, foraging, bushcraft, etc while also studying magic. haha I just realised he was basically a wizard dooms day prepper. I could have played druid but I wanted to be able to cast fireball :P
Ranger to me always feels like the most "heroic" class, even compared with classes like Paladin. Their versatility and diverse kit allows them to get a lot of stuff done, making them the perfect leaders in my eyes. My favorite is the Hunter conclave; it's honest and straightforward, basically distilled Ranger.
I’ve been poking around with the idea of a Swarmkeeper Ranger who’s a toy maker. His swarm is basically his worlds version of LEGO minifigs that somehow gained sentience through undisclosed reasons.
Personally, my favorite character that I've ever played was my Horizon Walker ranger. I was Callum Deign, the party's dodge-tank, healer, and unbeatable duelist. It was really fun just jumping around with misty step and messing with the DM who I'm sure hated me by the time we stopped playing. We didn't actually get to finish that campaign but hey, that just means the adventures of the indomitable Callum Deign have yet to end. Definitely want to do that again some day.
This is the first video of yours that I watched and my fiancé was watching over my shoulder and straight up moved it over too the TV so we could both watch it. Keep up the great work man 😊👍🏻
Yea man. I was just telling her that I always look out for New D&D creators because a lot of the current ones arnt very … charismatic. But your memes and art are on point. Thanks for the reply. You really be on top of this for sure 🤣👍🏻
You read all comments, eh? Then did you know that I value and love you and the work you bring into this world, and that I consider you one of my inspirations? Also what’s your favorite color?
All the things that you said were "less ranger-y" seems exactly like the kind of stuff that Ranger should lean more heavily into. Paladins are the same type of class as Ranger, a fighter mixed with a cleric instead of the druid that Rangers are mixed with.. I think if we fitted Rangers to instead be the druid/rogue hybrid to contrast the Paladin as the fighter/cleric hybrid would make them better and more in line with both their flavor and theme. I mean, what are hunters except wildlife killers? I think of Rangers as the survivalist, gritty, good at killing and staying quiet, but prefers nature compared to the rogue who prefers more urban terrain. That makes your "less ranger-y" criticisms fit more, like the invisibility and bonus temp-hp. Perfect for the survivalist naturist who prefers to stay out of sight of predators and other encounters they can't handle on their own.
Ranger since Tasha is fine as is. They get to be semi skill monkey's, have some good spells for utility and bring a good amount of dps. Are they as strong as Paladin's or full casters? Nope. On par with fighter and warlock? Pretty much. Stronger then Monk and Artificer? Yup by a good amount. I recommend checking Treantmonk's series on all the sub classes.
These videos are always amazing, and I always walk away from them with renewed inspiration to make my own characters and character concepts. They're funny, helpful, and you put a lot of work and effort into them. Thank you so much :)
Side note on “The Fey One” their first ability let’s them add their Wis mod to any charisma rolls. Not use wisdom *instead* of Charisma, they get Wis+Cha. And if you take human as your race, you get a feat that let’s you get expertise in any skill. Like, for example, persuasion. So… Cha+Wis+(Prof*2) on all persuasion checks. Or you can just go bard or rogue for bonus expertise. It isn’t like wisdom is bad for literally any character since it gives bonuses to perception, and high dex and cha is perfectly viable for rogue or bard. You can use str, con, and Int as dump stats and play the most overpowered diplomat in the game, with an end-game +22 in intimidate, deception, and persuasion. I’m only in level 5 with this character, and I’m not breaking them as hard as they can be broken, but they already have a +12 persuasion (16 Wis, 16 cha). In literally any encounter with creatures we can talk to, and wouldn’t you know it my favored enemies all give me bonus languages. I basically play this character as a ginormous nerd who just has monster types they think are extremely cool and has learned everything about. That they know how to kill them better as a result is entirely coincidental.
Yes!!! I'm currently playing a Satyr Fey Wanderer Ranger, and I'm loving it! While the Ranger class does have it's shortcomings, the flavor of the Fey Wanderer is just perfect for a fey race in a very high fantasy magic roleplay heavy campaign. 💚
@@jmormaple Thank you for that, fixed it with an edit. Play a lot of Pathfinder and 5e, and I always get mixed up going between the two games because they have different skill names for the exact same skills.
This was really helpful, giving me a better understanding of the Ranger class, because I really want to give the Beast Master subclass a chance, even though it’s considered the second worst class to play as.
Through playing, I have determined that multiclassing into fey wanderer ranger using many of the tasha's cauldron of everything optional class features is one of the best possible choices for flavor and increasing your power.
One Swarmkeeper I've been wanting to play is a sailor that died at sea but was saved by a sea god (or some other ocean being). And now he is a mercenary with new powers and school of piranhas that surround him. It's cool in my head, he'll throw a harpoon and then the blood from it will cause the piranhas to swarm.
I play my ranger story more on his subclass than being tied to nature. A Kobold who had to flee when a black dragon was laying siege to the silver dragon he served. She had him flee with one of her eggs to keep it safe, tasking him to grow strong together with her child and return to drive the black dragon away. The egg hatched, and the two have been traveling the world, seeking allies while also helping others they come across.
You made a good point about rangers subclasses being based on fictional characters instead of story archetypes. Makes me want to tweak the whole class with archetypes in mind.
Not two days ago I was playing around making a Ranger Beast Master build because I wanted so much to like that subclass, and what I'd come up with was a surly goblin who rode his wolf companion and shot arrows from its back. I had been aiming for a Warg Rider, but when I sat back and looked over the finished build, the first thing that came to mind was "this is a goblin cowboy." Two days later, I find this video. Rangers are cowboys. I'm sold.
We actually remade the ranger class and focused on them being survivalists-since the idea of the ranger is that they kinda know how to live on the land.
I remade ranger to be basically the party's scout - I made the useless primeval awareness ability a passive footnote that comes with your favored enemy, and it ACTUALLY tells you what type of creature you're sensing (great for RP), and replaced the original ability with one that pretty much breaks stealth (advantage on perception checks for a number of minutes equal to your level, and you cannot be surprised during it), but it's only limited to once per day. I always envisioned the ranger to be the first one in the party to notice an enemy approaching. Also rogues needed a class to counteract against.
While 15th level feature: Arcane Quick Draw seems interesting, it has almost no usage in the ranger spell list given the limitations of concentration, spell targets, and availability of damaging and combat-utility spells in the ranger spell list. Because the feature specifies a spell that targets the same creature as the attack does, it severely limits what spells can be used (as far as I can tell, just Hold Monster and Dominate Beast). This feature would really shine if used in combination with other features or feats usable as a bonus action if it could be used with other spells. For example, using the 11th Level: Magical Bull's Eye feature, and then casting Lightning Arrow. However, because the feature doesn't allow for self targeting, or targeting the enemy's locations (IE for Spike Growth), this potential is completely crushed. While I'm not sure how it would be worded, enabling spells that target the creatures location, or spells that transmute the next attack would be very helpful in making the feature more useful.
Swarmkeeper is so cool. I never thought of doing a kind of vamp/not vamp character with bats, but it sounds like so much fun. My first thought was doing a wood elf hermit with pixies for a swarm. I know, “had to leave my forest because bad guys” is the most basic ranger backstory ever. But hey, if it ain’t broke right?
I absolutely love the horde breaker ability. It allows you to hit every creature in a 10' radius from a point you can see within range. So if there is one big guy you can just shoot him twice. But if there is a little group of five or six guys in a bunch moving through a tight chasm or packed into a room in combat with your group then you can make six fucking attack actions on your turn. I have had some of the coolest moments with my ranger where my party is enveloped by a horde of monsters slowly killing every last one of them and then I walk up on my turn and blast every last one of them dead in one round, sometimes a dozen attacks, absolutely Legolasing the shit out of them.
That’s more of you having DM that allows those things to work consistently. Your DM must just throw things at you and not take into account how those things would realistically attack you. Zombies sure they will come in tightly packed hoards but things like kobolds, goblins, and most fairly intelligent humanoids na they won’t be bunched up unless you ambush them and even then very rarely will anything be bunched up like that. I would be bored out of my mind playing with every enemy just charging at my party and I in large blobs. Tactics aren’t something just players can do and use. Anything big enough and dumb enough to come charging straight ahead has got to be packin some hurt or can take alot of punishment because let’s face it 5e is the game of power builds even something crap as a regular ranger is ok though it’s crap in comparison to almost everything else because it does a little of everything else just far worse.
I feel vindicated. I came up with the idea to play a ranger cowboy a couple months ago, but am using crossbows instead of guns to keep things vanilla. It's definitely a rootin tootin shootin good time
I think a great setting for a Ranger is a magic forest which moves. The character has to constantly patrol the forest, making sure the animals are all coping with the mobile trees. They retain access to their preferred terrain/location, they get to resolve conflict with a variety of different people, animals and monsters not used to a roaming magical forest being their neighbour. And it can go anywhere the DM needs or just find somewhere to be inert for a while. Obviously forest can be replaced by a different terrain.
That sounds like a perfect campsite. Is there an excessively large tree in the middle that completely happens to be perfectly shaped to have doors, windows, flooring, and even planks installed?
Ranger is a case of 'It was really strong in previous systems, make it Melee Kirby". They OVER corrected for the shenanigans, and now they're basically offering you a different class without rebuilding it from the dirt up. The Beast Master is the main victim- by pushing what made Ranger unique to a subclass, and then neutering that subclass further, they reduced the fun of the class overall
I have no idea how good they were in previous editions, but if they were strong, they certainly weren't overcorrected, Ranger is in fact the best martial class in the game.
@@The_Yukki You could effectively ignore any terrain, your beast was a second character which had it's own action economy and could even be Multiple instances of itself with the right build, and overall you were just kind of unparalleled. 5e overcorrected with bounded accuracy and limiting the general power scope to 20 levels, while reducing the general power of everything across the board. This is why CR is a joke until it matters for abilities, and most of those abilities barely go over 1- by the tine they're useful, you're facing things that laugh at them.
@@The_Yukki wahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahhahaahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. R u mad u do know paladins are martials right?
@@geekpeak5052 Let me guess... "Spell slots? More like Smite slots" Paladins are fine, but the fact they are essentially forced to be melee, and have access to a pretty weak spell list is what makes them worse than rangers. Lvl 6 aura kinda nutty tho, I'll give you that. Too bad unlike rangers to make use of that they have to actually have decent charisma, unlike rangers with their ability to not put anything into wisdom and still perform well (though you don't really want to dump wisdom given it's best stat in the game, by proxy of being tied to perception, but expertise can make up the difference.)
Currently playing a dhampir gloom stalker in a one-shot. I wish I'd had the idea to make a swarmkeeper like you put here, but the main draw for me was _actually_ using the old favored enemy feature. The character's whole family was killed by vampires, so focusing in on slaying undead made too much sense. I think the Ranger needs a severe overhaul to clean up its theme and give it a real identity in this edition.
I've always thought of rangers as sort of the Swiss Army knife of the party. Need to find food? Done. Need to know where to go? Walking talking map, right here. Wanding a dark dungeon? Trap Sense. Sneaking around? Pass without a Trace. Something off in the distance, coming towards you? Do you want the dimensions in inches or centimeters? I love rangers. I like knowing what's going on in my environment, and always found that they were the best choices for that.
I completely agree. I'm playing a 14th level Horizon Walker in one-shots in a server and people always say a job is easier with me as a Ranger in the party. I start by buffing myself and the frontline with Aid and Longstrider and as we can chose a "profession" and mine is herbalist I carry several other "buffs and heals" eu me. Sometimes we just take good minutes with the preparations with anti-charm/frightning concoctions and other stuff. This boosts the group survivability and the Ranger itself it's kind of hard to kill, which is good bye itself. (That D10 is Nice). Several times I got to solve stuff by just talking to birds in forests, rats in dungeons and even moss in caves. It takes a little wit since the animals and plants are stupid, but manageble and super fast response when asking for tips. Tracking things, hiding and surviving are child's play. My character is the choose "mother" of all the parties since I end up having a solution for every little thing and giving good backup, but I think that since Rangers get fighting style and feels like a Druid/Fighter/Rogue their actual capabilities, specially compared to paladins, it's left short. And to me it all comes down to the "half-caster" stuff. Like Palahexs, Ranger/Clerics are fairly common and the Ranger/Rogue are a staple if you feel like you want to play a hunter more than a wild guide. In the end, be a utility bag in the wild doesn't bring that flavor of "feeling like a hero". Imagine if the "city ranger" was a Bard/Rogue half-caster with half the efficiency of both classes in terms of ability... The leftover taste is not good. If the Ranger would have better class feats/spells/spells' list and maybe "Wild Invocations" to compensate they could feel like something other than a cool npc. I like my Ranger and am proud of her job, specially because of the Horizon Walker features and spells and some aditions like Spell Gems that "expanded my slots", but I got the 14th level actually in Peace Cleric and holy molly the difference it's unfair. Rangers, if not "optimazed" can barely make a difference as a hero, and this is sad. Bards, Clerics and Druids can be excellent supporters while being excellent fighters with easy. Rangers CAN be nice supporters and good fighters if the player dedicate itself...
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It's a common misconception that "ranger" comes from "ranged weapons" or some such thing, but it's actually from "ranging over the land". The defining characteristic of rangers is not archery, it is *movement*. So ultimately, bows and related things, even beasts and related things, are all just optional icing on the cake that is "a dude who roams through the wilds and kicks butt out there".
Yeah the big problem with that idea is that half the damaging spells on their spell list only work with bows and arrows while the other half have no such restrictions requiring melee weapons. Building a Ranger without the ability to use ranged weapons effectively is like building a paladin without effective melee attacks. Technically possible, but doing so requires ignoring your abilities to such a degree you are inherently hampering yourself for no good reason and could probably achieve your goal better by just picking a different class.
I don't think anyone thought that ranger means "range" but as trackers they are natural hunters so a bow is in the kit... the problem is that fighters are better with bows than they are... Bows aren't the icing they are how they put out DPS, and they do better with bows than anything else, still being not great at it. Their defining characteristic is not movement, it is survival in the "range" they inhabit. Tracking, knowledge of the local flora/fauna (for hunting or herbalism), skinning, relationship with the wildlife (such as communicating) there isn't as much movement involved save that they know how to navigate safely and quickly and should communicate best routes to the party.
@@AlphaOmega1237 I agree... yr better off playing a fighter with a bow and giving your character the title of ranger.
@@AlphaOmega1237 Ranger's being in close combat works mostly fine, besides the problems that arise from the class itself. They have 6 spells over 5 levels that are restricted to ranged weapons, but it's not that big a deal to choose not to use them. It's less a Paladin choosing not to use melee attacks and is more a Paladin forgoing using healing spells. It's a built in part of the classes spell list but choosing not to use it doesn't gimp you that hard. There are much worse things for Ranger's than not using their bow lmao.
In which case, they can use a few more mobility powers, maybe a extra five feet of movement every four levels rounded up might actually fit quite well, rangers are faster than you.
I had a full-Vampire Swarmkeeper ranger, who lived in seclusion due to others being usually terrified of him. But in nature he learned to control Mosquitos, who would collect blood for him to keep him alive.
Woah that’s cool
Mosquitoes. Vampire popcorn
@@finchbird2419 more like a beanboozled because you don't know what kind of blood
As someone who strongly dislikes mosquitoes and finds vampires can have “final-boss-itis” with being so strong without a form of minions besides bats, the mosquito-master idea is really clever and I respect it enough to want to use it somewhere in a campaign now ✨
@@glaciallemon1360 They aren't actual mosquitos, they're spiritual beings that you can choose the form of. So one assumes that the swam master gets to choose what the swarm goes after.
I was in a mafia campaign once and the DM let our ranger homebrew urban as his favored terrain. This way he was actually useful in a low nature campaign
A lot of people will allow people to reflavor the cavernous sewers of cities as the underdark terrain
That campaign sounds interesting
They opened up that option in the 2nd ed. Rangers Handbook, connected originally to a kit called The Stalker. A flavorful option for more city-focused games, that can still express the archetype of the Ranger in a different way
Rangers are like the professional adventurer they’re based on Aragorn and a lot of their role in the party is being the jack of all trades you don’t excel anywhere but you can help with literally everything
The problem is that the Bard is already D&D's jack of all trades. The Ranger is all over the place as far as flavor (and often ability) goes. My impression in that most groups end up houseruling to make the Ranger feel as cool as it ought to be.
The problem is that you're Aragorn in a world where the rest of the Fellowship gets to fight the Balrog.
They aren’t based on Aragorn… Aragorn is based on the ranger class
@@fusionart4377 lotr came out in 1954 dnd didn’t come out till 1974
@@fusionart4377 Exactly why the books came out in 1954 and the movie came out in 2001, while 5e came out in 2014... Something doesn't add up.
Even if we were to take OG dnd as supposed inspiration for Aragorn...
a) ranger wasn't even a thing back then
b) '1e' came out in 1974, after the books came out.
Back in the day, I ran a campaign with ONLY ranger PCs. They had to find and re-establish an ancient world-wide teleporter network. Each player focused different ranger skill sets. Great fun was had by all.
Everyone has their own backstories/reasons for traveling, and everyone is good in many areas, but some specialize. sounds like a lot of fun.
a former dm i ran with had a similar theme, everyone started as a level 1 ranger and you had to get 'hired' and train into the other classes. So, if you wanted to be a wizard, you'd find a wizard that's looking for an apprentice and you learn to be a wizard and poof, your now a XRanger/1Wizard
Some classes work best in groups, and some only work if they're the only one (or maybe two) in the group. You might think an all-rogue group would be a problem in combat because you have no tanks and no AoE...until your party starts sneak-attacking in pairs--one dodging, the other attacking, then switch--and killing _everything you throw at them_ in a couple of rounds, _if that._ Then, when you start shoving big groups and swarms at them, they just run and hide and either ambush the swarms until they've whittled them down or avoid them entirely. And traps are, of course, useless.
And out of combat is even worse when everyone in the party is morally flexible and great at stealth, theft, deception, etc. And it only takes one of them taking a level of ranger to make wilderness-oriented stuff a breeze, too.
Don't let your players all be rogues, is what I'm saying, unless they like easy mode or you really like a challenge. All bards is also pretty rough.
@@Bacteriophagebs See, if only you'd watched some episodes of of Leverage beforehand.
@@aaronsirkman8375 thank you for reminding me of that show
I feel like the ranger is made for solo D&D adventures as it is a mixture of multiple classes: Rogue = sneak and avoid damage, druid = cast spells and heal, and fighter = attack/defense in combat. This makes them great at surviving alone, but that's rarely the goal in a D&D game, as you're part of a party.
Rangerr is just a melee dps dealer that had druidic spell as a half caster. Just like paladin was the same with cleric.
5th esition forgot that and just screwed them over. Lol
It’s really just meant for true adventuring/dungeon delving/camping in the woods every session campaigns.
They're pretty much lonewolves in almost every representation there is of rangers/hunters, in videogames, movies, etc
If you're tracking something or someone, I can understand a Ranger being useful; if you're just wandering around getting into adventures then they aren't really that useful.
@@celuiquipeut6527not restricted to melee at all
I think a TON of why ranger doesn't feel good is because of this misconception of what ranger originally was supposed to be. A lot of people think Legolas is supposed to be the archetype of a ranger, but he's not. Legolas is the archetype of the elf. It was Aragorn that was the ranger. He was the one who was able to figure out how to navigate around middle earth. It's supposed to be like the fighter, but with certain focus on survival and utility over brute force. They were even the original class that had access to dual weilding as a feature.
I think the better examples of rangers in recent fiction are the scouts in attack on titan. They quite literally surveyed the land and specialized in fighting a particular enemy, the titans.
Ooh that AOT ranger plot is now my proprty
Aragorn is known as Strider, wich is synonymous with ranger.
Aragorn is the OG Ranger. He is the Ranger that all other Rangers were based off of. WotC did the class dirty
Absolutely love this comment. It matches my thoughts exactly
Legolas was def a high level fighter with archery fighting style. I was going full melee with a Battle Master, then decided to pick up a long bow and took sharpshooter, and now I can pin seven targets in a row with pinpoint accuracy from 600 feet away. Then I got my fighting changed to archery fighting style, took two levels in rogue as well and
Wait. I made a fucking stealth archer AGAIN
Rangers shine in themed campaigns, if the dm has a certain sort of climate or region in mind and communicates with the ranger what it is then they get to shine with their terrain abilities.
rime of the frostmaiden for example is very well suited for rangers. Lots of beasts to talk to, not getting lost is super important in the survival aspects of the game and in general rangers are easy to theme into that adventure.
I find them very adaptable.
Funnily Rime of the Frostmaiden is exactly what I thought of to. Im itching to run it as my next campaign and I can only imagine how awesome a ranger would be in that setting.
Tomb of Annihilation has a similar vibe too. Jungle/Forest everywhere? Well, you pretty much get to use natural explorer everywhere! It changes in ruin settings depending on DM interpretation but the limited scope of environments helps.
I love themed campaigns for this very same reason. It's so fun to build a character having a theme and playing it feels much more pleasing because you don't run very often in the "my class features don't work here" situation
Curse of Straid is good for the favored enemy feature, just select undead.
being in a desert campaign and NEVER getting lost in it is great.
I think an Archeologist subclass would be sick. Being able to appraise ancient items and being able to decode old texts and symbols, being the trap specialist. It may also work with rogue but i think a ranger subclass with base rogue features like evasion and stuff would be cool.
Antiquarian and I'd have it be rogue with a little MU or Cleric. Mainly they would get divination spells and maybe some protection. I wouldn't give them evasion but I'd let them have stuff like escaping bonds.
@@Dragonette666and a lot of bluff to make "this item has some ritual significance" go through instead of admitting that he has no idea what is the purpose of that item?
that sounds interesting to me it would fit both quite well. the rogue would be more of the indiana jones type and the ranger more like an actual archeologist that is more about the ecavation. would make for great duos with the two. the ranger finds the place and the rogue gets more useful when they actually have found it.
Doesn't that exist in Pathfinder? It honestly makes sense as a party addition since it wold fit in with your typical dungeon diving adventure. Most dungeons aren't new constructions in D&D or any fantasy based tabletop game. There's typically a history that goes along with them. Having someone along that knows history, lore, and various other aspects behind the creation of dungeons makes perfect sense. It's interesting that when there's a modern setting or sci-fi setting involving delving in to an ancient ruin, there's always this type of character that is part of the group but rarely is there one in fantasy settings. Stargate had Daniel Jackson, for example.
Indiana Jones conclave
Rangers probably make perfect NPCs that assist the party from location to location. They could be like Officer Jennys and all be related but specialize in the region you find them in.
That's more or less how I employ them.
I have a Ranger who is effectively a "Horse Girl".
That would actually be a really cool way to run a Ranger as a player character as well. Instead of playing an individual Ranger, you play whatever member of the Ranger order happens to be in the region the adventurers are traveling to. The DM could also give the player a little extra information about the area between sessions, so when the party visits unfamiliar territory they have a local to give them the lay of the land.
A mix of officer jenny and Minecraft villagers (how they have biome variants)
As was mentioned in the video, they also make *really* good travelling companions in games that take place primarily in a single biome. Think a Sherpa type character familiar with the tundra of Icewind Dale in Rime of the Frostmaiden, or an escaped slave in the taken in and trained by Myconids in the Underdark during Out of the Abyss. It's just one of things where, instead of making the character before the campaign and hoping you get to use your situational abilities, you need to _talk with your DM_ and see if there's a central environment to the campaign that the party is going to be sticking around, so that they'll be able to fully utilize all of their flavorful, nature-y abilities. Stuff like this is why it's just... _so_ important to talk with your DM during a Session 0. It can turn a class that's not really all that good in most situations to an absolute MVP and natural leader/guide for the campaign. (bonus points if you work out an arc with the DM to have your ranger captured or incapacitated at some point in the campaign, so the party has to try and manage without all of your insane survival skills in an extremely hostile wilderness they're completely unfamiliar with for a couple sessions)
That sounds like a fun concept, a ranger organization that assist the player in multiple places. All you need to do is call and the nearest ranger will be sent to help assist you in that area.
I’d love a Ranger class like “explorer” that gives you multiple favored terrains and terrain-related buffs
Play 2nd. That was covered in the Complete Book of Rangers.
@@almitrahopkins1873 Being an old first edition player back in the 80s, I generally did not like second as so much of it was practically quoting first edition, then telling you to buy more books, but that was one of the few things I liked about second edition, they really hit it out of the park with that and a couple other second ed "background supplements" I still use a few of them as the lore and flavor aspects of my games. By the time it became all "esoteric prestige classes" the writers forgot what the core classes where.
@@mattlewandowski73 Player vs Environment got a much heavier emphasis in 2nd. It really saw the Ranger and Druid come to the front of the pack.
That is up to every GM to make out of the "Favoured Enemy/Ground" himself - so he can adapt and balance it for his Theme and Mechanics.
After considering the similarities between Clint Eastwood's spaghetti westerns and Kurosawa's samurai epics, I had also come to the conclusion that the ranger class was the logical fantasy/ D&D equivalent. They are a natural fit for both western and the wandering samurai/ ronin themes.
you're honestly so correct in making the ranger cowboy subclass, and honestly with most rangers i've played i've leaned into the cowboy/bounty hunter flavour because, at least to me, THAT'S the archetype rangers should be based off of, as much as you can't find that in a lot of typical fantasy (though it's super present in westerns, modern settings, and sci fi). my current ranger is a beast master with a velociraptor companion, but she's less of a nature fanatic and more of a bounty hunter using her innate elven connection to nature to justify the more druidic aspects of the class. i defs would love to see a lot more rangers work with this concept (or even just similar bounty hunter concepts), and hopefully even in 5.5 or 6e the ranger comes into its own as much more of a hunter type of class than just a nature detective.
Funny that you say nature detective. That's literally what my ranger is. A detective who moved into the woods. He's also a dhampir.
You could argue the whole meta of "Adventurer" as a career path in D&D settings leans into bounty chasing mindset, since that's by-and-large the role they fill in society. Which makes Rangers having a hard time shining in such a context make both more and less sense at the same time.
I mean, my ranger is drake warden so it's basically how to train your dragons
What about Scout.
My new 5/2 gloomstalker/fighter is ex military, ex blackops and currently a hitman/mercenary. (reroll after first ever char died)
Using his tracking and stealth skills (and action surge lol) to dispose of any single target in a swift burst.
And if that doesn't do the trick, he's skilled in two-weapon fighting and will be picking up battlemaster for reaction maneuvers.
also get a homebrewn Shadowback Cave-Gorilla spirit, direwolf statblock with ape moveset to use with Summon Beast.
it was his old ranger compagnion when he was in the ranger squadron in the military.
and my DM rules that my spells are prepped instead of known. (because a ranger is all about preparing for situations)
Planning to play him as a blunt, straight forward, can't lie to save his life kinda character.
Bit more resilient, bit less intelligent. :D
My old gnome warlock maybe hit 3 eldritch blasts in his entire 7 level lifespan, so i'm hoping to be a little more useful in battle this time. :')
The issue with rangers in 5E, is that 5E has put so much effort into bypassing the "survival and exploration" pillar of the game. You probably choose a ranger (and probably with the Outlander background) because you enjoy the idea of wilderness survival gameplay. Hunting, tracking, all that stuff. Then low and behold the abilities you get mean the DM just says "OK you do it, pooff, it's done, let's move on" and you skip over all the ranger-y activities and it barely features in your campaign as a result.
Not every table enjoys travel, exploration and survival gameplay - and that's fine, because it is easy to skip that if you want. But 5E has sooo many abilities and spells to bypass it that it becomes really hard to focus on for the tables that DO like it.
Even if you don't skip that phase of the game, the base rules for the ranger are too limiting with requiring you to be in your favored terrain or chasing your favored enemy to get a benefit.
@@saldiven2009 Yeah, but I'm not sure if limitations are a bad thing. Is Ranger too limited in scope? Or is every other class to powerful?
@@jasonhawkins6888 Personally, I think ranger is too limited. For example, the fundamentals of tracking something are largely the same, regardless of what you are following, but knowing a lot about the behavior of a specific animal helps you know better where to look for tracks when trailing an animal. (Like, foxes a notorious for being clever when attempting to avoid a pursuing predator.)
IMO, a Ranger should have a constant bonus to all tracking attempts and an additional benefit with a favored for. Currently, they are no better than anyone else with Survival proficiency at tracking anything not a preferred enemy.
Additionally, these restrictions to when a Ranger can use their core defining abilities are not restrictions you see in other classes, despite there being no balance reason to include such restrictions.
@@saldiven2009 you make a good point. And I think I like your ideas BETTER than Tasha's. It make sense and doesn't have the anime feel that the WOTC fixes have.
@@saldiven2009 Agreed. It should be free proficiencies for being a Ranger or maybe a wisdom skill focused Jack of All Trades, then Expertise for the rolls that line up with your specialties.
In context of Ranger's Apprentice, the feature that let's you be pretty much invisible until your next turn makes a lot of sense.
John Flannagan ? Awesome book series
The series I'm basing my character on and why I'm playing a ranger. I base all of my ideas about rangers on those books
yeah boi, those books are the reason I want to play a ranger
I've always seen the ranger archetype as a career adventurer. Someone who goes around doing odd jobs that no one else is willing to; be it for pay, glory, or just because it's the right thing to do. That's why they're so versatile. They're trained to get the job done. It's a weird archetype to fit into because it includes everyone from bounty hunters to caravan guides to vigilantes to monster hunters. Rangers are strange because their archetype IS what a dnd adventuring party does. The fellowship enlisted Aragorn because he does what they're doing for a living. That all said, I've always loved the idea of a cowpoke ranger and I adore your subclass. I'll be sure to try it out!
That's a cool idea, just a generic adventurer class that is kinda okay at everything. The thing holding rangers back for me is that they are specifically druid-adjacent. Having two naturey classes makes less sense to me than having to religiony classes. Clerics are more about healing and defense (exceptions exist) both on the character sheet and in the fiction, as well as generally seeming to be more focused on worship, while paladins are more about going out and smiting evil. Having a druid who protects nature with magic and turning into animals and a ranger who protects nature with magic and a bow and arrow is just dumb to me. Rangers are bound, again, in fantasy, and on the character sheet to their forest just like a druid, or just how a cleric is bound to their temple, but notably, how paladins AREN'T I feel like if a paladin said "so there is this quest..." They would be getting handfuls of holy water put in their hands as they got pushed out the door before they finished their sentence. Ranger needs to be redefined to be like that. Specifically different functionally and in motive from druids. But they aren't. Half their features want them to be tied up in their backstory defending their tundra from oozes and elementals. I have no idea how to do that. Honestly the class should be scrapped and the spare parts go to fighter and rogue and druid subclasses. Hunter roguish archetype with hunters mark, beast master fighter archetype, and a hard to name explorer/survivalist druid circle with martial weapon proficiency and maybe extra attack at level 6 like valor college bards. It sounds weird because rangers are so firmly established but it makes sense game design wise.
In the real world, kings used to literally hire rangers to make sure their lands were safe and free from poachers etc. So yes, career adventurer is an apt description.
Yeah, rangers are just built to be a typical adventuring party all in one, so it has all the things, but isnt so tailored to each like other characters. Theyre very built for all around utility and ability, but because most parties have someone who just does things better, ranger feels weak as hell.
I think a good homebrew option for rangers is that, on a long rest, they can switch their favored foe and environement to another, whether it be ahead or the one theyre currently in. That way, it is still locked in, but they already have the knowledge of the land and just need some time to acclimate and/or refresh their mind and body for whats ahead. That way the rangers MAIN ABILITIES that are incredibly situational and may barely come up throughout an entire campaign can actually be useful. Maybe at a certain level (or campaign), the ranger unlocks more foes and environements to favor, like the feywild, shadowfell, etc etc, any of the not-natural places. Id also introduce books or "veteran" npc's that can inform the ranger on different foes and environments for a roll of some kind indicating how many days this knowledge is held and can be used like favored foe and such.
I find itd make it the most fun class for a beginner to play then. They get a little bit of ability in everything and can learn to balance their spells, inventory, actions, etc etc. Then, they can roleplay and interact with the world to learn about it, both in game and out of game. Then showing a new player a monster sheet wouldnt be immersion breaking, itd be their character studying. Explaining a region wouldnt be the dm talking to the player, but a character or book explaining it to the character. I think then ranger would be super fun to play
@@korvincarry3268 except they have low-ish AC, middling HP, few defensive abilities, and near zero crowd control/AOE. They are a mix between rogues without sneak attack and druids with hardly any known spells or spell slots, and paladins with lower AC who can't smite or use aura of protection. And that's pretty much it.
@@AveragePearEnjoyer without multiclassing or the swarmkeeper subclass(the best ranger subclass by far) they fall of but if you play a campaign or one shot between Level 1 to 6 they do their job pretty good.
I honestly enjoy the cowboy idea, but while I was watching this I realized you could easily adjust the tracking ability to be able to track any humanoids, essentially turning them into something like a bounty hunter or detective. I'd love to explore its versatility!
I played a wood elf Ranger for a while who was exactly that; professional bounty hunter, part time gambler, full time alcoholic (which is fine, since he used that to replace an addiction to much harder drugs). He used the old Revised Ranger rules, so he actually did extra damage to his favored enemy of Humanoids. And, considering we were based in a city, there were plenty of humanoids around to fight.
Sadly, as the campaign was coming to an end, he died of a papercut. Well, the whole group did.
@@aaronsirkman8375how does one die to a papercut? (Barring the IRL answer of it gets infected)
@@jasonreed7522 First, have you seen "Read or Die?"
Second, it was a whole lot of papercuts...from a Living Spellbook. After we made our way up the library tower fighting flying automatons spamming mini fireballs.
@@aaronsirkman8375 Oof
Now THAT must've been upsetting
@@stormy_does_stuff It was rough, but our DM was moving away, so it was a good way to end that campaign. We actually ended up starting another campaign once he got settled in, which was probably our longest running single campaign.
The Cowboy Code of Conduct is really cool. Kinda halfway between Paladin and ranger.
1. Live each day with honesty and courage.
2. Take pride in your work. Always do your best.
3. Stay curious. Study hard and learn all you can.
4. Do what has to be done and finish what you start.
5. Be tough, but fair.
6. When you make a promise, keep it.
7. Be clean in thought, word, deed, and dress.
8. Practice tolerance and understanding of others.
9. Be willing to stand up for what’s right.
10. Be an excellent steward of the land and its animals.
There is a book series that I've read called "The Ranger's Apprentice" and that is what I think of when you talk of ranger. Basically they are a multiclass of fighter and rogue with a sprinkle of survival skills. I believe that is what they should have done with ranger, a survivalist with a heavy emphasis in playing a stealth fighter. In that series the main character is taught to dual wield, specialize in the bow, how to camoflage, how to survive, and most of all how to kill your enemies silently.
Basically Fighter/rogue.
Amazing series
good books
@@charlieflo1118 hell yeah it is!
Those books are great.
A man of culture
I'm having a lot of luck playing a ranger in a Drow campaign. "The Underdark" being a RAW favored terrain is real good when the entire campaign is expected to be in the Underdark, and both Drow and Elves are the same favored enemy too!
Elves all being elves? Yep that sure helps
i think one of the core parts of enjoying playign a ranger is making sure with your DM the setting you'll be spending most of your time in so you can choose a favoured terrain that is actually useful rather than something you spend the whole campaign wishing "well I wish I knew we'd be spending so much time in this type of area before I made my character"
Ranger in Icewind Dale, favored terrain is artic.
Gloomstalker in eternal darkness? Yea not bad
Love the Drow.
My favorite of all.
Lloth 2024 YA!!
I do love the idea of the Cowboy Subclass. As that's literally how I play my Horizon Walker Ranger, as a far traveling magical cowboy who can teleport all over the place with a rifle. Also YOU DIDN'T MENTION HORIZON WALKER AT ALL?! One of the most unique Ranger subclass options!
Depending on what book it's in, he may just not know about it
@@pyrojack8230 It's in Xanathar's Guide to Everything.
If ethereal step had a longer duration people would play ranger for this subclass alone
As a Ranger lover, a cowboy conclave sounds amazing! Excellent idea, Antonio!
Also, I think you'd be a great D&D Horror Story narrator!
This made me come up with a list of cool Cowboy Conclave names:
_The Spurs_
_Hell's Horsemen_
_The Gumption_
_Frontier Justice_
_The Dusters_
_The Deputy's Chosen_
_The Songbirds_ (For a party of ranger/bard multiclasses)
_The Knuckledusters_ (Ranged/melee brawlers)
_The Lead Company_
_Los Diablos_
_Bad Tidings_
Feel free to add more, and let me know what you think!
Well the Texas *Rangers* were a staple of Wild west mythology
I would say the rangers one thing is “survivalist”. So the way to tackle that is with lots of varied skills. Focusing on the skills is hard because you fall behind in combat impact. But if you have a DM that gives moments in the adventure for the ranger skills to shine it’s great.
I've yet to play a campaign where survival mechanics even existed, because any time it was attempted, accounting for things like hunger or navigation or even encumbrance bogged the gameplay down too much. Subsequent failures to find food leads to exhaustion and TPKs from random goblin troops just due to bad luck. Navigation failures just prolong travel times, which forces the DM to come up with new random encounters they weren't prepared to have. In the best case, survival mechanics prohibit narrative progress. In the worst, they create catastrophes just from dumb luck, which lead to dissatisfying outcomes for the players. So it's best to ignore them. But when you ignore them, there's not a way for a ranger to shine. On the other hand, not ignoring them, the ranger makes those mechanics inconsequential, unless they're not in their favored environment, so the survival mechanics may as well have not existed or the player may as well have not played a ranger. The survival mechanics are badly designed, which makes designing a class around them consequently bad.
I feel like making Rangers a survivalist that could pick from abilities list like the ones that battle masters have or the eldritch invocations list would be a way to make it work. That way you can have both combat AND survival stuff that’s relevant to combat, exploration, or RP as the player wants, as opposed to having a bunch of exploration stuff that isn’t relevant in certain campaigns
I kinda like the idea of a ranger either being a generalist survivalist or a niche survivalist. But I also believe in common sense growth. Like whichever one you'd pick, the more knowledge and experience you get, the more you can branch into the other one.
I like the idea of a survivalist. You could lean into it really hard by making a character archetype that will never feel hopeless, no matter what. Survivalist could be the same thing for... well, surviving, as the Investigator class is for investigation in pathfinder 2e.
For those uninitiated, Investigator is a mundane martial class with information gathering and anticipation abilities that bend reality to achieve the level of foresight and experience we normal people wouldn't be able to rp. Abilities like pulling out any consumable that you "prepped" beforehand, planning out stratagems for combat or just plain out fabricating real info.
The same way Survivalist could produce effects that result in increased tenacity in harsh environments, without having to actually explain the science behind it. (or better, let the players come up with fun explanations on how you manage to undo banishment to another dimension without magic)
I think using survivalist as a guide. We could fix the class issue over all.
A survivalist is a master of the land they are staying in . So if we do some editing to
Natural Explorer and Favored Enemy.
Favored Enemy -it let you learn about a target to hunt it better so the more you fight a type of creature. The better you get at doing it and you learn about it.
Same for Natural Explorer . the longer you stay in a type of land the better you get at staying their.
I'll add guns (includes blowgun), polearm and throwing to fighting styles as their are many ways to hunt (giant yo yo).
I came up with a few buffs to Ranger that helped make them avoid being too overspecialized, such as increasing the amount of favored terrains and foes they can have, as well as some specific buffs to subclasses.
Gloomstalker is incredibly underrated. It gives you the ability to become basically invisible in the darkness, even to creatures that have darkvision. It’s amazing when you are attacking at night, or if you’re inside someplace, just blow out the candles. Although it’s somewhat situational, it pairs well if you’re into multiclassing some sort of stealth character.
Play a tiefling gloomstalker. Use your thaumaturgy to dim lamps. Kick ass.
Thank you for the suggestion. Looking to make a character like Miguel O'Hara still struggling on what to multiclass.
Idk what your sources are for that but pretty much every optimisation youtuber will tell you they are busted af
You know what the funny thing is? Xanathar quips about it being useless for rangers to hide in the dark because most monsters have darkvision... Despite the fact that Xanathar wouldn't actually be able to see said ranger if they were actually hiding from him.
Gloomstalker Shadow Monk and you can pop out of shadows and run across water and up walls. Pretty much the ultimate spy, infiltrator, or sniper.
Final Fantasy 7, you spend most of the game one step behind a celestial you're trying to track down. One level in ranger with celestials as your favored enemy would make finding Sephiroth and Jenova a lot easier.
I hate that almost everything ranger gets, multiple other classes get better versions of at the same level or lower.
Pro: you find Sephiroth early.
Con: you find Sephiroth early.
Why you so mean, what have I done to you ?
@@Sephiroth517 You've done a lot of bad things but personally I don't mind since your world would be a lot more boring without you.
@@Sephiroth517 I laughed the first time I saw you remove Aeris from the game
Ranger is a great class. Its a tool box you put your own stuff into. Its also very good given campaign regions.
In 5e at least, Rangers fill the "Half-caster Druid" role, as a Paladin is to Clerics and an Artificer is to Wizard.
artificer isn't wizard-halfcaster, their spell lists are way too different and thematics don't match up at all, not to mention Artificers aren't exactly martials outside of 2 subclasses (rest focuses on using cantrips instead of swinging a sword/shooting).
What further reinforces the point is how artificers multiclass with other casters. Unlike Ranger or Paladin, they don't add half their level rounded down, instead adding half-level rounded up, which leads to some fun things like 1 lvl artificer 19 lvls wizard.
Now I'd love to have an actual wizard half-caster, a Magus, smack with a sword and pack a spell into that smack etc. Give then wizard-like spell prep, a spellbook and I can think of like 3 subclasses of the top of my head, one focused on your 2hander big smack no idea about the name. 2'nd let's call Spell Breaker, and make it 'sword and board' with focus on defence against magic (perhaps magic resistance as subclass feature later on) and... arcane archer (not the sad excuse fighters got, though if you wanna keep that one, let's call it Eldritch Archer).
I wonder what a half-caster bard would be.
@@danielhuelsman76 Pathfinder 1e had something close to this, a "skald" who had some bard spells, and ability to inspire rage giving allies weaker version of barbarian's rage (it's either weaker or shorter I can't remember)
@@The_Yukki I was thinking of a Dancer archetype off the top of my head.
@@The_Yukki I want Magus
DM: We have Magus at home
The Magus at home *Wizard: Bladesinging
One thing I'd like to quickly point out about the Primal Companion Feature (the replacement feature for the Beast Master subclass) is that, unlike the Ranger's Companion Feature which requires you to use your full action for it to attack, you can command the primal companion to take an action using your Bonus Action, meaning you and your companion can both attack on the same turn right off the bat. Subsequently, you can still make two attacks and have your companion attack on the same turn once you get your Extra Attack at level 5, and further more once you hit level 11 your companion can attack twice when it takes the attack action (the Primal Companion feature only replaces the level 3 feature for the Beast Master keeping the other features unaffected for the most part), meaning you can get 4 attacks in every turn.
I think he knows that, it's just those are optional features a he assumes not every table will use them. I knew one dm years back that never allowed the Xanathar book for the longest time.
He literally mentions that in the video.
Drakewarden also gets this, it's just really nice to be able to do more with your companions. It's really sad they've still yet to even errata this into base Companion to streamline it with all the other "summoner" style subclasses that command with bonus actions.
@@firekirby123 True, I'd only mentioned the revamped Beast Master because he was already talking about that subclass.
I'd also like to remind everyone, since this is a mistake I see sometimes, that the Primal Companion is still a creature with a regular action economy, but it specifically acts DURING your turn, rather than in its own initiative or after yours (like some companions/familiars do). Your companion has only 1 action per round. The option to command it by giving up one of your attacks does not let you also command it with a bonus action. It's simply an option you have for when your bonus action is used up by something else, such as when casting a spell, to get your companion to use its action.
To touch on Ranger's spellcasting, recent additions to their spell list include Revivify and Greater Restoration, which, alongside Healing Spirit, gives them a surprising amount of healing they can pump out. Combined with the Pearl of Power to add some additional spell slots and the Moon Sickle (which like Druids, Rangers can also attune to!) Rangers can absolutely work as a party healer and dedicated support class.
I heard the swarm of animals and I thought bats, and I thought of constantly saying in combat “it’s morbin time”.
It should be canon XD
Goosebumps
Com-bat, you say?
*takes an aluminum bat to the shins*
@@RashidMBeyi will BATter you to death for that?
when you talked about the swarm, I basically thought of a swarm of nightmarish crows based on illusion and necromancy spells
not so far away from your own twist 🥰
Hmm- that opens an interesting question: does a swarmkeeper's swarm even have to be real or can it be illusonary or imagined? Gives me the idea of a severly alcoholic dwarf ranger who is often close to delirium tremens and sees those epinymous white mice or crawling bugs... and can somehow direct his hallucinations to affect others.
Murder of Crows*
@@Abxiximab That sounds wonderfully deranged and thoroughly based. I encourage you to develop this character!
@@Abxiximab Side note: now you've got me thinking about a crack addict with latent, uncontrolled illusion/conjuration powers, that causes him to manifest the bugs he feels crawling under his skin.
@@Abxiximab I was largely inspired by Carmina from Dead by Daylight... :(
I like your idea of a hunter of questionable sanity that hunts down his target wherever they are and could drives them crazy
In my mind this type of ranger would be more spell focus...like a witch/druid
but he could enhanced his combat ability with incomplete beast forms, twisting his body into a deadly weapon just for the hunt
the swarm could be illusions/imaginary or animals raised from the dead
there is a lot of possibility ^^
I love the vampire idea you presented. I’m thinking about maybe changing the subclass to drakewarden and flavouring the draconian companion to be the red bat that his mom sent to him.
Pointy hinted at this but; I really like the concept of rangers, it just isnt very good as a player class in almost all campaigns - it does however fit very well as an npc. Most NPCs stay one place the majority of the time, and thus it makes sense that they specialize in the area and maybe the creatures around it. The new optional features does something to mitigate this flaw in the class, but as they said, it often takes away from the vibe of the class
You just described 2 of my favorite things. Cowboys and vampires. I now want to make a cowboy vampire ranger who uses a graveyard as his farm.
instead of cows, it's been his/her family's solemn duty to keep the restless souls/ zombies living there (a cursed graveyard) in check. eventually one (or more escaped), and now they are traveling to bring the souls back in/ end the threat to his family. (favored enemy is undead i guess? Or have them go for any undead as their favored foe in combat?)
This is gonna be super helpful, I actually need a cowboy type set of enemies for a cowboy area my party’s approaching. I’m hoping to integrate the Ranger Lich into that as well. Thanks mate!
Love your videos but there are a few things to mention:
1. Favored Foe does damage only on one attack per round and takes up concentration which is also bad.
2. The optional feature for Beastmaster makes them work off your bonus action to attack instead of your action (similar to other subclasses that gain a companion now like Battlesmith for Artificer).
This was just some corrections, now for things that aren’t that.
1. Everyone claims that Ranger is a mixture of Fighter and Druid. This makes sense given Paladin similarly being a mixture of Fighter and Cleric. But given what abilities they are granted and that they get more skill proficiencies, I would argue it’s more Rogue and Fighter. The main Druid flavoring comes from some shared spells, a class feature that is shared by one Druid subclass (Circle of The Land), and plenty of flavor word choice that one can easily conflate for Druid including a fighting style that grants them two Druid cantrips.
2. Rangers have always been bases namely on Aragorn and the Dunedain Rangers (not Legolas). Other similar archetypes for Rangers (besides cowboys) would be things like Bounty Hunters (to the point that Star Wars 5e, a conversion of 5e renamed the class to Scout and have different bounty hunters as examples for subclasses), Skirmishers, and other sorts of martially proficient, yet skilled individuals like the IRL Texas Rangers.
3. Rangers aren’t exclusively good in using ranged weapons anymore with the advent of spell equivalents to more prominent ranged options. Thank goodness for things like Ashardalon’s Stride, Searing Smite, Elemental Weapon, and so on. I think Drizzt Do’Urden, of the novels in the Forgotten Realms, is to blame for sticking the archer/beastmaster archetype to Ranger.
4. Ranger with it’s initial features came out to be so bad because WotC tried to build it around the “Exploration Pillar” of the game. Unfortunately, that pillar doesn’t get used. But kinda fortunately, it would have probably been a bad time for people since Ranger was the only class that had a feature that even worked with that pillar (Natural Explorer). You could argue that Expertise from Rogue (especially Scout Rogue) or Bard or the Skill Expert/Prodigy feats could assist, but that wasn’t apart of intended design. WotC did more to fix Ranger with Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, but only so much.
I hope all of this didn’t come off as nitpicky and negative. I love your videos and just wanted to poke through some commonly parroted points mentioned in the video. And the subclass is pretty good!
I agree, I always felt that rangers being spellcasters seemed weird, al least as a core thing. I can see it getting magic in multiple subclasses.
He also forgot the Hunter Subclass, unless that's what he meant when he said "Monster Slayer" subclass.
Ahhhh the "Exploration pillar" i don't even disagree with it as a pillar!
But it's the area where i feel like every character has zero abilities and is totally incompetent at.
Party fights an adult dragon? meh.
30 ft. wall? WATCH OUT GUYS!
Also he described the capstone wrong. It's not adding wisdom to all damage rolls against favored enemy, its being able to add wisdom to an attack or damage roll once per turn against a favored enemy.
@@ULTIMATZEKROM he forgot hunter. Monster Slayer is it's own subclass.
I like to think of Rangers as special-forces (Dutch from the movie Predator, Rambo, both of the main characters from the movie The Hunted, etc.)
They infiltrate behind the lines, living off the land, remain undetected, while carrying out missions.
The main modification I would make to the PHB version of the Ranger is grant Natural Explorer (additional terrain type) more frequently. Instead of just 6th & 10th Level grant additional terrain type at level 4 and every two levels thereafter. It makes sense as at low levels they specialize in the areas they came from but as they adventure (and travel the world) they learn to apply their skills in more and more environments.
They work incredibly well in that situation... but the problem is that this is a game where you work as part of a group. that's part of what makes Hide in Plain Sight such an annoying feature. It makes you, specifically, very good at hiding and not moving... which is great if you are planning an ambush... that none of the other party members are around for...
And you'll keep Favorite Enemy as it is? Underwhelming and mostly situational? Favored Foe is not much better since it requires concentration like most of the spells in your spell list.
Ranger should be a non-magical martial class focused on hunting, moving around better, surviving nature and such.
@@Chaosmancer7 I mean, it's no different in that regard than a rogue trying to do his thing with the paladin going CLANK CLANK HERE COMES THE TANK
@@yarnosh A little, but the ranger seems almost designed for solo play, in a very strange way.
And while a rogue can figure some way to utilize the Paladin's clatter, little you can do with the Rangers ambush besides make the enemy think the party -1 is ambushing them. Which is kind of sucky
@@Chaosmancer7 The ambush scenario seems pretty niche. That's certainly not the core M.O. of a Ranger. My Ranger has been hugely useful to he party navigating through wilderness, especially in favored terrain, of which he has two now. And the flying beast companion is indispensable for scouting especially with Beast Sense. And if you role play survival (like need to hunt food for the party) and don't want to cheese it with a druid casting Goodberry every day.
I dunno, I have zero problems playing a Ranger with a party. He's just so versatile. Ha's made the finishing shot on more than his share of encounters...
It's going to depend a lot on the setting. Like if it's a more old school dungeon crawl, a Ranger won't be of much use.
Great analysis. I do disagree that the Tasha optional abilities are less ranger-y, because a Ranger is the archetypical skilled survivalist that uses all of the tools of the trade as well as improvisational skills to cross wild stretches of land and be able to overcome the obstacles, whether monster or terrain. Canny's ability to give expertise and new skill buff this. The extra spells from Primal Awareness buff this. Extra movement and speed options, temp HP and exhaustion recovery, temporary invisibility (ok out of character concept, this should have given something like a Pass Without Trace flat buff to stealth) all contribute to this archetype. Most of the "ranger bad" rhetoric stems from the oft forgotten 3rd pillar of D&D, exploration. I'm convinced WotC does not like going outside
Super impressed by the effort you put into these - the art is also phenomenal btw
The Ranger is a legacy class that was designed to assist in hex crawls. This from a time when you actually had to venture into the wilderness to find your dungeon.
I was looking for this comment. Back in ye olde days Ranger had a niche: they found and guided the party to the orc encampment and kept bellies full on the way there. Nowadays, there are so many ways to subvert these two mechanics, the Ranger really has no purpose.
And I'm not saying the minimizing of those mechanics in modern D&D is a bad thing, either. Most groups found them tedious pace-killers. Just ask the mayor where the orcs are coming from, buy ten gold of rations, and you're fighting greenskins in under a minute.
So what's a class to do when their niche is all but removed from the game? You can demote it to a subclass. Either have it be a flavor of Fighter with an animal companion and bonuses to outdoorsy things, a Druid with more martial skills rather than casting, or even a Rogue that hunts by climbing trees and sneak attacking animals in a prairie.
@@TheKrossRoads or just make it a background.
If your campaign is heavily survival based like Dark Sun, then rangers could mean the difference between life and death for your party.
@@TheKrossRoads I think making a nature or beast flavored subclass for other classes is a great idea. We already have the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster, which are Spell flavored fighters and rogues. We have summoning focused Druids, which takes the Beastmaster's thunder, and Fighters can be better archers as well.
The Ranger Class has just been left behind.
@@ValisFan3 But if you are playing a survival campaign, DnD is a horrible system for it.
The whole bit about larping as Aragorn is true. Part of why it happened in the first place. Same with Gygax basically inserting monks into 1e because he liked kung Fu movies. That said, my personal belief is that rangers can fill a viable niche. That niche being wilderness survival. It's just that the modern playstyle isn't interested in the old school formula of trekking through a wilderness back and forth between town/stronghold and the dungeon.
Oh my god you are right cowboys perfectly fit the idea of a ranger. I think in general the concept of rangers fits better with some later exploration age roles. Frontiersman, trappers/furriers, expedition style explorers and big game hunters.
Honestly think these roles can help solve the fix of being tied to a specific location. Why should rangers be tied to one type of place or creature?
You should be focused on adapting to different environments & surviving in them. You should have different genres of tools to choose from, things that use arrows or bolts, Blackpowder weapons. Hell why not even have them focused on unconventional weapons Environmental /ensaring weapons I.E. bear/wolf traps, bolas, Nets, Bombs, tripwires, lassos, whips.
Most importantly we should change how we look at how they are specialized in dealing with flora, fauna and fungi.
Big game hunters specialize in larger enemy classes, keeping track any enemy they have wounded, once they've got you there's no escape. They specialize in making weapons deal more damage if left in an opponent. Imagine a whaler with a harpoon or filling an ogre with barbed crossbow bolts.
Trappers/furriers are much more easily identify the roaming habits of creatures & tracks, have much better options for stealth, are great with poisons, get much better use of the corpse of creatures and make more valuable items from them.
Explorers are a master of all tracking and can identify most creatures and if not they can likely classify them. They are master gathers and can easily determine the safety & edibility of flora and fauna. They know many languages and are better at attempts to communicate to those who they do not understand the language of & better at interpreting all except thieves cant.
Frontiersman are masters at surviving and enduring harsh environments of any kind. They don't need to eat as much or as often, they can prepare food to make it take longer to spoil. They can obtain drinking water from sources most can't. They gain bonuses to perception and are better at hitting targets from far range. They are far better at climbing & surviving falls. Injuries affect them less and and can preform special actions at rest (and sometimes combat) to remove poisons, stop bleeding create splints to restore normal function.
Btw I encourage anyone that has them to comment further ideas.
I agree with what you said and I feel like that's what they are trying to do with some of the new optional abilities and me personally I always saw rangers as explorer to me that's how they felt
Well, I would say that rangers are also good tribals and ice age arquetypical people if rage is not a big thing to their character, not necesarily more exploration age things exclusively. But I can definetly see it. After all the monk was originally based on martial arts movies and now is arguably the weeb class, so not every class is for typicall fantasy medieval settings.
Yeah, I think the fronteirsmen idea really exposes the true nature of the ranger.
The reason why all the ranger ideas focused on protecting a spot of nature or something feel like druids, not rangers, is because that IS what a druid is, not a ranger. The vibe of the ranger is someone who survives and thrives in the wilds, and knows how to use it to their advantage.
The pseudo-vampire swarm ranger concept is so cute, I love it! Definitely an inspiration for a new character.
I've had a lot of fun multi-classing rangers, they're so versatile you can make them fit in with most character concepts
The optional abilities come from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, where the really bad abilities (excluding Foe Slayer for some reason) from the Player's Handbook were overhauled so that ranger became actually good.
My interpretation of the ranger design philosophy is that they're supposed to be self-sufficient generalists. What they can do (outside of the exploration/tracking stuff that everyone skips) _can_ be done better by other classes. Fighters are better for sustained damage, spellcasters are better for burst and control, rogues have an easier time becoming stealthy, and anyone with Healing Word is a better support. However, rangers have attacks and duration spells for sustained damage. They have control and area-of-effect spells. They may sneak as good as any rogue. They have Cure Wounds or Goodberry for a sticky situation. I think this design philosophy fits the flavour of a secluded loner in the wilderness rather well.
And before anyone brings up bard, they have two subclasses that let them be a martial at all and most of their main-class features are based on song of rest, a clear support ability, and bardic inspiration, which literally requires an ally to be used at all. Like their 2nd level feature suggests, they are jacks of all trades for skills and out-of-combat RP, while rangers are jacks of all trades mechanics-wise. Mechanically, bards are support-oriented spellcasters.
The Bard is the with the cleric the best support class. The Ranger is more someone that can do multiple things that a party lacks. Stealth you have pass without a trace. Control spells that require concentration like spike growth.
Healing and goodberrys if the healer run out of healing spells.
But mostly most people play the ranger kinda wrong. He isn't supposed to be sneaky or a tank and still people think he is.
The Tasha's options make the ranger much more fun and on equal footing to other classes. Gloom Stalker is a beast too!
They were more or less on equal footing to other classes from the beginning, people were just bitching about ribbon features being too ribbon
@@georgeuferov1497Tasha's was an absolute necessity. Ribbon features are nice, but ribbons are just that. They're decoration. And having half of your features be dependent on where you are is a serious handicap when you're not in that environment. Take the Tomb of Annihilation campaign. Forest would work alright for much of Cult, but inside the tombs, you get nothing. Deft Explorer is so much better, since it gives you Expertise in one of your skills. Favored Enemy is alright for survival/exploration/roleplay. But it's next to useless in combat. Favored Foe is so much more useful overall, because the extra damage simulates your knowledge of fighting such creatures, and it basically gives you a light Hunter's Mark without using actual spell slots.
The xanathar subclasses were amazing for ranger and honestly should've been the base subclasses
Let me say that I am finally getting around to commenting on one of your videos! I found you a couple weeks ago, subscribed, and have just been autoplay consuming all of your D&D with a twists! I comment on this one because I have a list of race and classes to make an OC character for each but Ranger has been blank for the longest time! I’d almost given up hope of finding anything that resonates or that I could tolerate until NOW! The cowboy conclave is the subclass answer I needed! Thank you a thousand times over!
With a single dip into Life Cleric, Rangers can be one of the best (if not taking the top spot) out-of-combat healers in the game. Goodberry is absolutely insane, giving you a flat 40 HP to divide among your entire party for a single first-level spell slot. Right before you finish your long rest, pump every spell slot into making berries, and you’ll be set for the day.
Berries last for 24h, so even if your dm doesn't allow longrest casting (I can see why, it does feel like an oversight in the rules) you can do it right before long rest with your leftover slots and have them essentially for the next day.
@@The_Yukki Either way, that’s probably the best healing you can get out of combat. The only reasons you’d need to take a short rest is for the party to get back other resources.
@@The_Yukki Its not an oversight. It was specifically stated in a post that it works and is intended
@@tekbox7909 oh I know about the post, it doesn't change the fact it can come off as cheesing. I'd probably allow it at my table, but I can see why someone would not.
It's just ironic though because I think "healer" was not the point of the class. And every aspect of the ranger can be done better by other classes.
I still enjoy playing them though.
Seems like the rules for Favored Terrain and Enemy just need to be adjusted so that the Ranger can change their picks throughout the campaign. For example, if the Ranger's party moves into a new terrain, the ranger should be able to study that terrain over several days, and become familiar with it. This would make it their new Favored Terrain. And the same should hold true for an enemy. If the party has been tracking or fighting orcs for a few days, the Ranger should have the option to be studying the enemy, and after some time, it becomes their new Favored Enemy.
Another optional class feature, Familiar Terrain: You can spend several days (and probably gold because 5e loves that for some reason) to study and familiarize yourself with a new terrain or environment. Once you have done this, you gain the favored terrain benefits for that specific location, and any locations similar to it.
This way you can get specific with the “one specific place” theme of the ranger, it can continue to be useful, and you can use your knowledge gained their elsewhere. Not like ranger needed more optional class features, but it’s an idea.
I would adjust the favored Terrain to be a regional thing, versus just a particular terrain type. So instead of say woods.. I would say more of a geological region (or tropical, or sub tropic, or tundra) which would include all terrain features in that region (woods, hills, rivers, mountains).
An tie in a level tiered unlock for that ability that allows something similar to a Familiar Terrain aspect that requires a ritual like prep time (ie do some hiking around an quickly survey it) you could use in other places outside of your favored terrain in order to gain the same benefits.
Absolutely love the idea of Gregori - im definitely using him!
Keep in mind, the "optional" stuff is from Tasha's revised ranger cuz folks didnt like the ranger
Yeah it is basically a new optional base class.
Lets be honest here, IF the Ranger can navigate Walmart on black friday morning then he's hands down MVP.
He'll have to use his dual wielding shortswords to make it out alive. :D
Your cowboy idea has made me want to try ranger for the first time. That sounds like a fun spin on it I never thought of before. Thanks for that. Another good video
10:55
Legolas is a fighter though.
Aragon is the ranger.
I do have to say that I played a ranger in a oneshot in one specific mountain range. It was almost OP. The DM had to nerf him as he could literally know where the quarry went, where to find food, get extra damage track things with advantage. He is a beast on survival campaigns focused on one specific terrain. DM needed his tracking and gave me optional features on top of that. So I guess I ended up playing a bit roided ranger. I have to say though, combat wide, a bit underwhelming. Okay damage, and after the first round (Gloom Stalker) it felt like you did almost nothing. Then again the nova turn one probably skewed that perception.
Last i checked aragorn never cast spells
@@armorclasshero2103 no, but he does take herbs from the wild and turn it into a remedy for frodo to slow down the poison of that cursed sword (like a healing spell), made sure to cover the fellowship's trail (like the pass without trace spell) and other things that if you think for 5 minutes can be replicated with a spell
@@Sharkakaka you actually can't do lotr in d&d at all. those were skill checks at best.
@@armorclasshero2103 The magic system in Tolkein's work is not very well defined. Basically only the gods, demigods (like Gandalf and Sauron), and elves can do "magic" with some exceptions. Aragorn is know to have "healing hands" which can be considered magical but also could not depending on who you ask. Also keep in mind that rangers didn't always have magic in D&D.
@@vonwaxy9941 in what edition did ranger not have magic?
I played a Horizon Walker with all the Tasha's Couldron replacements, and it transformed the "forest dweller with a bow" into a scout into the unknown of the other realms, those 'less situational' options characterize more as a tracker with a lot of ability to adapt to new enviorments
It was so cool
I enjoy ranger atm (and actually really really like OneDND Ranger) and personally, my sort of "core of what a ranger is" has always been "The pique survivalist" With a little druid and a little martial... obviously, lots of characters can be survivalists, and druids embody that too, but i think of druids as "protectors of nature" and rangers as "survivalists" they're the ones who get hired to guide you through the sketchy jungle, the one who can survive in the wilderness forever, the hunter, the apex predator. Idk, that's what I've always thought of them.
What I'm gonna do eventually is, when they come out officially, mechanically play a plasmoid swarmkeeper ranger, but play it as an amorphous swarm of rats that are somehow smart and coordinated enough to keep a humanoid shape most of the time, and have the swarmkeeper swarm be The Rats That Make Up The Character
What kind of trouble will they get themselves into?
The rat king
I am a ranger player, it has always been my favorite class, matched only by paladin and sorc. My favorite recent ranger was a thri-kreen named Justin Case (my dm just sort of let us play setting specific races in any campaign). The whole deal with Justin Case was that he was a classic hard-boiled noir detective, whisked away into the feywild. He was best in urban terrain, but his tracking proficiency was genuinely super helpful for the main story.
He also had a bit where he would thri-kreen broadcast his detective-film internal monologue all the time, which was a real hit with the party.
I've actually also made a Thri-kreen ranger! Tazvan the Chitspeaker. Even though I mostly made him to prove/test that fun characters could be made in my own setting I feel like he'd be fun to play.
In an attempt to keep this short classes (especially full caster classes) in this world are basically the only thing that's made it possible for civilization to exist (that's how many monsters are here) so each of the handful of nations in the known world guard the secrets of training people into their classes like the state secrets they are. Meanwhile Tazvan became a ranger by accident while traveling with a ranger he'd found lost in the desert. His life mission is to gain enough glory in his people's eyes that he can found a new clan of Thri-kreen that he can teach his new knowledge to.
He's a violent, naked, bug-man surviving in a wilderness incredibly infested with monsters who's telepathic voice buzzes and sounds insect-like. I'd really like to play him someday.
There was a mimic NPC in one of the games I played in named Justin Case
I had personally homebrewed a similar subclass to the cowboy idea that was fit for something more "pirate" themed. I had named it the Gunslinger. They would have an affinity for flintlock pistols, more specifically, drawing from the Ranger's belt of flintlocks to create opportunities for big burst damage. I hadn't fully worked this out but, to account for the animal taming side of things, I would allow this class access to some aquatic life, more specifically, dolphins or any sea mammals really, to help guide the ship the ranger inhabited. The ranger spells that tie to their ranged weapons would also apply here
Firstly love the cowboy conclave idea, more so now becasue I'm running an old west themed one shot, also really love the swarmkeeper idea~ i might have to steal it.. anyway! brilliant work as always your such a gem keep at it!
I’ve always wanted to play a cowboy in DnD but could never get it to feel right. An enormous, genuine thank you. This looks like so much fun
I made the mistake of choosing ranger for my first ever character and my first ever campaign and I thought I would be doomed, but luckliy I've found a lot of success with the drakewarden subclass! I've taken a lot of inspiration from Game of Thrones, Eragon, and, of course, HTTYD, and I've been able to create a character with a rich backstory along with impressive and useful abilities and feats! However, I really loved your creation of the Cowboy conclave and I honestly can't eait to try it in the future in other campaigns or if something should befall my character ranger. Thanks for all the helpful tips!
Her: "He's probably thinking about other girls."
Him: "If Kirby's copy-abilities were D&D-classes, Archer would be Ranger and Ranger would be Gunslinger."
6:01 correction, you can add it your attack roll OR damage and only ONCE per turn against your favored enemy.
Secondly you missed level 14's Vanish which lets you do the hide action as a bonus action and also not allow you to be tracked unless you do so intentionally or by magical means. Basically what the rogue gets at level 2, only worse.
My BF is currently playing a circle of spores/swarm keeper multi class tortle called Sherm, who grows mushrooms on his shells and keeps wasps. And the synergy between both subclasses is so amazing
I think my favorite ranger I’ve played was a Warforged Swarm Keeper Berserker Barbarian multi class he was an animated Scarecrow who was animated because a witch cursed the land he was on and the cursed land killed the farm owner so motives by anger and “for da birds” will he strike down every coven
2:43 Favoured enemy was *really* good in 3.5 and PF 1e. So, Wizards nerfed it because they hate fun.
6:05 Like most 5e capstones, this is completely underwhelming and does nothing but incentivise crossclassing.
The capstone is +WIS to the attack or damage roll, which is better than just damage.
...
...
But it can only be applied once per turn to one attack. People think it's trash tier when it's actually exponentially worse than they assume it is. Lol.
@@GlacialScion Yep. Compare that to 'you can one-shot a favoured enemy that has taken any damage'.
Eff Wizards for nerfing my class!
@@GlacialScion exactly, my ideal fix for it is to instead a feature you get at 4th level, it’s PER attack made, AND based off the proficiency bonus.
I understand putting it at 4th level seems… odd. But I have 3 reasons for it
1). Any earlier (say level 2) and people would just use it as a dip like with fighter and action surge.
2). Any later like say level 6-9 it might never see play in a campaign or session.
3). Putting it at 4 creates incentive and rewards players for going into 5th level for the extra attack.
The Level 20 Capstone is really a feature that should be just be built into the Level 1 Favored Enemy ability.
I started watching a bunch of videos about rangers on RUclips BECAUSE I wanted to build a ranch hand/ cowboy ranger, so when you started talking about ranger cowboys I yelled "YEEES!" so loud my roommate came to see what was going on 😂 so thank you for helping me flesh out the idea I've been playing with!
My favorite dnd character I ever played was a ranger, She was a Tiefling with an unfortunate placement of her horns being where her eyes should be making her blind, raised by a hermit wizard in the forest who's familiar was a crow. When the wizard died she mourned but at some point found herself able to see via the crow, over time crows just seemed to gravitate towards her as she practiced archery using their sight. Just a fun little swarmkeeper concept it had the added bonus of the watchers dark gift cause it was a curse of strahd campaign
So one of my favorite ideas for re making the ranger is to give them something like a wizard's spellbook ranger "lore" a ranger has lore they know such as spells knowledge on enemies or terrains, but they can only prepare so many like other characters would spells, and they only know so many and must add to their lore (ways might include leveling up, researching enemies, studying their corpses, studying a terrain, or learning from another ranger) I like this idea because it sticks to the thematic strengths of the ranger while still working mechanically (at least in theory) there is also some question of what the bonuses for terrains might be and maybe there would be multiple, so a forest might have removing difficult terrain penalties, a mountain a climb speed, or the ocean swim speed for example, and/or something similar to what favored terrain does for specific terrains
The ranger always was a straightforward class to me: Exploration, survival and hunting. The ranger doesn't need to stay in the same place, the ranger is a pilgrim, a traveler. He travels long distances, learning different biomes, different climates, different types of nature. He uses bows because it's the most effective tool for hunting. The ranger is sneaky, patient, you don't see him but he sees you.
The ranger is like PREDATOR, but good instead of evil. The ranger is like a Witcher, accepting bounties from people who doesn't know how to deal with monsters. The ranger studies the creatures.
Including a mechanic where the ranger can actively learn about terrain or a type of creature would improve them quite a bit, instead of restricting it on level up as a choice. Kinda like how wizards can learn spells and put them into a spellbook, a ranger should have a bestiary that they fill out as they kill and hunt during a campaign. IDK what benefit it would provide, but I'm sure others could figure something out.
@@RaccKing21 I use a % system. In other game, magic, languages and other types of knowledge develops by %. Let's say you have your homeland (forest) at 100% because you born there and live there since then, you know everything, animals, geography, weather, etc. Then when you grown up and moved to another region not so far from your home, lets say mountains. You worked there as a "watcher" for 6 yers and learned the most you could but there's still much more to discover. Roll a dice with a maximum of idk, let's say 60% (10% for every year you were there). A 42% is the result. You can develop that knowledge every time you make a check related to that region. Let's say you made 12 rolls on a session, then you have 12 tries. You must succed by rolling MORE than 42%, if you do, you upgrade 1%.
This last part is my favorite, not only is easy but also balanced and quite realistic. When you start learning, it's easier to discover new things, but the more you know, the more you have to delve because the most dark, rare things are the ones you are missing. A char with 90% won't learn much by hunting deers as another char with 4%
I once played a wizard-ranger. He was basically a scholar wizard that travels around adventuring picking mushrooms as a hobby. You know, foraging, bushcraft, etc while also studying magic.
haha I just realised he was basically a wizard dooms day prepper. I could have played druid but I wanted to be able to cast fireball :P
Ranger to me always feels like the most "heroic" class, even compared with classes like Paladin. Their versatility and diverse kit allows them to get a lot of stuff done, making them the perfect leaders in my eyes.
My favorite is the Hunter conclave; it's honest and straightforward, basically distilled Ranger.
I’ve been poking around with the idea of a Swarmkeeper Ranger who’s a toy maker. His swarm is basically his worlds version of LEGO minifigs that somehow gained sentience through undisclosed reasons.
Personally, my favorite character that I've ever played was my Horizon Walker ranger. I was Callum Deign, the party's dodge-tank, healer, and unbeatable duelist. It was really fun just jumping around with misty step and messing with the DM who I'm sure hated me by the time we stopped playing. We didn't actually get to finish that campaign but hey, that just means the adventures of the indomitable Callum Deign have yet to end. Definitely want to do that again some day.
This is the first video of yours that I watched and my fiancé was watching over my shoulder and straight up moved it over too the TV so we could both watch it. Keep up the great work man 😊👍🏻
That's very sweet! I'm glad you both liked it!
Yea man. I was just telling her that I always look out for New D&D creators because a lot of the current ones arnt very … charismatic. But your memes and art are on point. Thanks for the reply. You really be on top of this for sure 🤣👍🏻
Great video! Your comment about the “wouldn’t it be cool to play Aragorn” conception of the class actually makes a lot of sense
You read all comments, eh?
Then did you know that I value and love you and the work you bring into this world, and that I consider you one of my inspirations?
Also what’s your favorite color?
orange (and thank you)
All the things that you said were "less ranger-y" seems exactly like the kind of stuff that Ranger should lean more heavily into. Paladins are the same type of class as Ranger, a fighter mixed with a cleric instead of the druid that Rangers are mixed with.. I think if we fitted Rangers to instead be the druid/rogue hybrid to contrast the Paladin as the fighter/cleric hybrid would make them better and more in line with both their flavor and theme. I mean, what are hunters except wildlife killers? I think of Rangers as the survivalist, gritty, good at killing and staying quiet, but prefers nature compared to the rogue who prefers more urban terrain. That makes your "less ranger-y" criticisms fit more, like the invisibility and bonus temp-hp. Perfect for the survivalist naturist who prefers to stay out of sight of predators and other encounters they can't handle on their own.
Ranger since Tasha is fine as is. They get to be semi skill monkey's, have some good spells for utility and bring a good amount of dps. Are they as strong as Paladin's or full casters? Nope. On par with fighter and warlock? Pretty much. Stronger then Monk and Artificer? Yup by a good amount. I recommend checking Treantmonk's series on all the sub classes.
This cowbow conclave is so cool as an idea. It really does fit. Thank you for this, will fit my westernish campaign plan perfectly.
These videos are always amazing, and I always walk away from them with renewed inspiration to make my own characters and character concepts. They're funny, helpful, and you put a lot of work and effort into them. Thank you so much :)
Side note on “The Fey One” their first ability let’s them add their Wis mod to any charisma rolls. Not use wisdom *instead* of Charisma, they get Wis+Cha. And if you take human as your race, you get a feat that let’s you get expertise in any skill. Like, for example, persuasion. So… Cha+Wis+(Prof*2) on all persuasion checks. Or you can just go bard or rogue for bonus expertise. It isn’t like wisdom is bad for literally any character since it gives bonuses to perception, and high dex and cha is perfectly viable for rogue or bard. You can use str, con, and Int as dump stats and play the most overpowered diplomat in the game, with an end-game +22 in intimidate, deception, and persuasion.
I’m only in level 5 with this character, and I’m not breaking them as hard as they can be broken, but they already have a +12 persuasion (16 Wis, 16 cha). In literally any encounter with creatures we can talk to, and wouldn’t you know it my favored enemies all give me bonus languages. I basically play this character as a ginormous nerd who just has monster types they think are extremely cool and has learned everything about. That they know how to kill them better as a result is entirely coincidental.
Yes!!! I'm currently playing a Satyr Fey Wanderer Ranger, and I'm loving it! While the Ranger class does have it's shortcomings, the flavor of the Fey Wanderer is just perfect for a fey race in a very high fantasy magic roleplay heavy campaign. 💚
Forgive me if I missed something, but diplomacy and bluff aren't the 5e terms for these skills.
@@jmormaple Thank you for that, fixed it with an edit. Play a lot of Pathfinder and 5e, and I always get mixed up going between the two games because they have different skill names for the exact same skills.
@@archsteel7 yeah lol I saw that and wondered, but I figured you must play Pathfinder too
@@caspiangyarados9279 Yoo I'm playing a Satyr Fey Wanderer Ranger in my campaign too!
This was really helpful, giving me a better understanding of the Ranger class, because I really want to give the Beast Master subclass a chance, even though it’s considered the second worst class to play as.
Antonio never failed to amaze me with his concepts and subclass ideas (and also his sense of humor)
Through playing, I have determined that multiclassing into fey wanderer ranger using many of the tasha's cauldron of everything optional class features is one of the best possible choices for flavor and increasing your power.
One Swarmkeeper I've been wanting to play is a sailor that died at sea but was saved by a sea god (or some other ocean being). And now he is a mercenary with new powers and school of piranhas that surround him. It's cool in my head, he'll throw a harpoon and then the blood from it will cause the piranhas to swarm.
I play my ranger story more on his subclass than being tied to nature. A Kobold who had to flee when a black dragon was laying siege to the silver dragon he served. She had him flee with one of her eggs to keep it safe, tasking him to grow strong together with her child and return to drive the black dragon away. The egg hatched, and the two have been traveling the world, seeking allies while also helping others they come across.
You made a good point about rangers subclasses being based on fictional characters instead of story archetypes. Makes me want to tweak the whole class with archetypes in mind.
Not two days ago I was playing around making a Ranger Beast Master build because I wanted so much to like that subclass, and what I'd come up with was a surly goblin who rode his wolf companion and shot arrows from its back. I had been aiming for a Warg Rider, but when I sat back and looked over the finished build, the first thing that came to mind was "this is a goblin cowboy."
Two days later, I find this video.
Rangers are cowboys. I'm sold.
We actually remade the ranger class and focused on them being survivalists-since the idea of the ranger is that they kinda know how to live on the land.
I remade ranger to be basically the party's scout - I made the useless primeval awareness ability a passive footnote that comes with your favored enemy, and it ACTUALLY tells you what type of creature you're sensing (great for RP), and replaced the original ability with one that pretty much breaks stealth (advantage on perception checks for a number of minutes equal to your level, and you cannot be surprised during it), but it's only limited to once per day.
I always envisioned the ranger to be the first one in the party to notice an enemy approaching. Also rogues needed a class to counteract against.
While 15th level feature: Arcane Quick Draw seems interesting, it has almost no usage in the ranger spell list given the limitations of concentration, spell targets, and availability of damaging and combat-utility spells in the ranger spell list. Because the feature specifies a spell that targets the same creature as the attack does, it severely limits what spells can be used (as far as I can tell, just Hold Monster and Dominate Beast). This feature would really shine if used in combination with other features or feats usable as a bonus action if it could be used with other spells. For example, using the 11th Level: Magical Bull's Eye feature, and then casting Lightning Arrow. However, because the feature doesn't allow for self targeting, or targeting the enemy's locations (IE for Spike Growth), this potential is completely crushed. While I'm not sure how it would be worded, enabling spells that target the creatures location, or spells that transmute the next attack would be very helpful in making the feature more useful.
Swarmkeeper is so cool. I never thought of doing a kind of vamp/not vamp character with bats, but it sounds like so much fun. My first thought was doing a wood elf hermit with pixies for a swarm. I know, “had to leave my forest because bad guys” is the most basic ranger backstory ever. But hey, if it ain’t broke right?
I absolutely love the horde breaker ability. It allows you to hit every creature in a 10' radius from a point you can see within range. So if there is one big guy you can just shoot him twice. But if there is a little group of five or six guys in a bunch moving through a tight chasm or packed into a room in combat with your group then you can make six fucking attack actions on your turn.
I have had some of the coolest moments with my ranger where my party is enveloped by a horde of monsters slowly killing every last one of them and then I walk up on my turn and blast every last one of them dead in one round, sometimes a dozen attacks, absolutely Legolasing the shit out of them.
That’s more of you having DM that allows those things to work consistently. Your DM must just throw things at you and not take into account how those things would realistically attack you. Zombies sure they will come in tightly packed hoards but things like kobolds, goblins, and most fairly intelligent humanoids na they won’t be bunched up unless you ambush them and even then very rarely will anything be bunched up like that. I would be bored out of my mind playing with every enemy just charging at my party and I in large blobs. Tactics aren’t something just players can do and use. Anything big enough and dumb enough to come charging straight ahead has got to be packin some hurt or can take alot of punishment because let’s face it 5e is the game of power builds even something crap as a regular ranger is ok though it’s crap in comparison to almost everything else because it does a little of everything else just far worse.
I feel vindicated. I came up with the idea to play a ranger cowboy a couple months ago, but am using crossbows instead of guns to keep things vanilla. It's definitely a rootin tootin shootin good time
A gun is just a reskinned crossbow...
I think a great setting for a Ranger is a magic forest which moves.
The character has to constantly patrol the forest, making sure the animals are all coping with the mobile trees.
They retain access to their preferred terrain/location, they get to resolve conflict with a variety of different people, animals and monsters not used to a roaming magical forest being their neighbour.
And it can go anywhere the DM needs or just find somewhere to be inert for a while.
Obviously forest can be replaced by a different terrain.
That sounds like a perfect campsite.
Is there an excessively large tree in the middle that completely happens to be perfectly shaped to have doors, windows, flooring, and even planks installed?
@@SnowWing000 there sure is now! Lol
Ranger is a case of 'It was really strong in previous systems, make it Melee Kirby".
They OVER corrected for the shenanigans, and now they're basically offering you a different class without rebuilding it from the dirt up.
The Beast Master is the main victim- by pushing what made Ranger unique to a subclass, and then neutering that subclass further, they reduced the fun of the class overall
I have no idea how good they were in previous editions, but if they were strong, they certainly weren't overcorrected, Ranger is in fact the best martial class in the game.
@@The_Yukki You could effectively ignore any terrain, your beast was a second character which had it's own action economy and could even be Multiple instances of itself with the right build, and overall you were just kind of unparalleled.
5e overcorrected with bounded accuracy and limiting the general power scope to 20 levels, while reducing the general power of everything across the board. This is why CR is a joke until it matters for abilities, and most of those abilities barely go over 1- by the tine they're useful, you're facing things that laugh at them.
@@The_Yukki wahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahhahaahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. R u mad u do know paladins are martials right?
@@geekpeak5052 Let me guess...
"Spell slots? More like Smite slots"
Paladins are fine, but the fact they are essentially forced to be melee, and have access to a pretty weak spell list is what makes them worse than rangers. Lvl 6 aura kinda nutty tho, I'll give you that. Too bad unlike rangers to make use of that they have to actually have decent charisma, unlike rangers with their ability to not put anything into wisdom and still perform well (though you don't really want to dump wisdom given it's best stat in the game, by proxy of being tied to perception, but expertise can make up the difference.)
Which edition?
Currently playing a dhampir gloom stalker in a one-shot. I wish I'd had the idea to make a swarmkeeper like you put here, but the main draw for me was _actually_ using the old favored enemy feature. The character's whole family was killed by vampires, so focusing in on slaying undead made too much sense. I think the Ranger needs a severe overhaul to clean up its theme and give it a real identity in this edition.
I can't believe how good the ranger with dampier idea was! So cool!
I've always thought of rangers as sort of the Swiss Army knife of the party. Need to find food? Done. Need to know where to go? Walking talking map, right here. Wanding a dark dungeon? Trap Sense. Sneaking around? Pass without a Trace. Something off in the distance, coming towards you? Do you want the dimensions in inches or centimeters?
I love rangers. I like knowing what's going on in my environment, and always found that they were the best choices for that.
isn't the swiss army knife the wizard though?
I always just see rangers as 'what if i made the fighter a druid'
I completely agree. I'm playing a 14th level Horizon Walker in one-shots in a server and people always say a job is easier with me as a Ranger in the party. I start by buffing myself and the frontline with Aid and Longstrider and as we can chose a "profession" and mine is herbalist I carry several other "buffs and heals" eu me. Sometimes we just take good minutes with the preparations with anti-charm/frightning concoctions and other stuff. This boosts the group survivability and the Ranger itself it's kind of hard to kill, which is good bye itself. (That D10 is Nice).
Several times I got to solve stuff by just talking to birds in forests, rats in dungeons and even moss in caves. It takes a little wit since the animals and plants are stupid, but manageble and super fast response when asking for tips. Tracking things, hiding and surviving are child's play. My character is the choose "mother" of all the parties since I end up having a solution for every little thing and giving good backup, but I think that since Rangers get fighting style and feels like a Druid/Fighter/Rogue their actual capabilities, specially compared to paladins, it's left short. And to me it all comes down to the "half-caster" stuff. Like Palahexs, Ranger/Clerics are fairly common and the Ranger/Rogue are a staple if you feel like you want to play a hunter more than a wild guide.
In the end, be a utility bag in the wild doesn't bring that flavor of "feeling like a hero". Imagine if the "city ranger" was a Bard/Rogue half-caster with half the efficiency of both classes in terms of ability... The leftover taste is not good.
If the Ranger would have better class feats/spells/spells' list and maybe "Wild Invocations" to compensate they could feel like something other than a cool npc.
I like my Ranger and am proud of her job, specially because of the Horizon Walker features and spells and some aditions like Spell Gems that "expanded my slots", but I got the 14th level actually in Peace Cleric and holy molly the difference it's unfair.
Rangers, if not "optimazed" can barely make a difference as a hero, and this is sad. Bards, Clerics and Druids can be excellent supporters while being excellent fighters with easy. Rangers CAN be nice supporters and good fighters if the player dedicate itself...